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AND OFF THERE-?” “ GOD’S COUNTRY.” SAID KEITH DEVOUTLY. Page 176 

















THR 

RIVER’S END 


A NEW STORY OF 
GOD’S COUNTRY 


BY 


JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD 

il 


AUTHOR OF 

KAZAN, GOD’S COUNTRY, 
THE GOLDEN SNARE, Etc. 

* ILLUSTRATED BY 

DEAN CORNWELL 



NEAV YORK 


GROSSET & DUNLAP 


PUBLISHERS 


Made in the United States of America 










7 



Copyright, 1919, by 



Cb 


COSMOPOLITAN BOOK CORPORATION 



All rights reserved^ including that of translation 
into foreign languages^ including the Scandinavian 


. 




w- 


-'0 v J/C f ^ 


A, S’ / 


'A 






PRINTED IN U.8.A. 



■ • • 



ILLUSTRATIONS 


“And off There-?” “God’s Country,” 

Said Keith Devoutly . . . Frontispiece 

PACING 

PAGE 

“ Remember, Old Chap, You Win or Lose the 
Moment McDowell First Sets His Eyes 
on You!’* ...... 25 

‘‘John Keith Told Me Just What I’d Find 

Here,” He Said.184 

As Keith Had Dreamed of Those Mountains in 
Boyhood and Youth, so Now He Dreamed 
His Dreams over Again with Mary 
Josephine • . . . 232 



The River’s End 










THE RIVER’S END 


I 


B etween Conniston, of His Maj¬ 
esty’s Royal Northwest Mounted 
Police, and Keith, the outlaw, there was 
a striking physical and facial resemblance. 
Both had observed it, of course. It gave 
them a sort of confidence in each other. 
Between them it hovered in a subtle and 
unanalyzed presence that was constantly 
suggesting to Conniston a line of action 
that would have made him a traitor to 
his oath of duty. For nearly a month he 
had crushed down the whispered temptings 
of this thing between them. He repre¬ 
sented the law. He was the law. For 
twenty-seven months he had followed 
Keith, and always there had been in his 
mind that parting injunction of the splen¬ 
did service of which he was a part—Don’t 
come back until you get your man, dead 

or alive.” Otherwise- 

A racking cough split in upon his 


X 



2 THE RIVER’S END 

thoughts. He sat up on the edge of his 
cot, and at the gasping cry of pain that 
came with the red stain of blood on his 
lips Keith went to him and with a strong 
arm supported his shoulders. He said 
nothing, and after a moment Conniston 
wiped the stain away and laughed softly, 
even before the shadow of pain had faded 
from his eyes. One of his hands rested on 
a wrist that still bore the ring-mark of a 
handcuff. The sight of it brought him 
back to grim reality. After all, fate was 
playing whimsically as well as tragically 
with their destinies. 

Thanks, old top,” he said. Thanks.” 

His fingers closed over the manacle- 
marked wrist. 

Over their heads the arctic storm was 
crashing in a mighty fury, as if striving to 
beat down the little cabin that had dared 
to rear itself in the dun-gray emptiness at 
the top of the world, eight hundred miles 
from civilization. There were curious 
wailings, strange screeching sounds, and 
heart-breaking meanings in its strife, and 
when at last its passion died away 
and there followed a strange quiet, the two 


THE RIVER’S END 


3 

men could feel the frozen earth under 
their feet shiver with the rumbling rever¬ 
berations of the crashing and breaking 
fields of ice out in Hudson’s Bay. With 
it came a dull and steady roar, like the 
incessant rumble of a far battle, broken 
now and then—when an ice mountain split 
asunder—with a report like that of a six¬ 
teen-inch gun. Down through the Roes 
Welcome into Hudson’s Bay countless bil¬ 
lions of tons of ice were rending their way 
like Hunnish armies in the break-up. 

“ You’d better lie down,” suggested 
Keith. 

Conniston, instead, rose slowly to his 
feet and went to a table on which a seal-oil 
lamp was burning. He swayed a little as 
he walked. He sat down, and Keith seated 
himself opposite him. Between them lay 
^ a worn deck of cards. As Conniston 
fumbled them in his fingers, he looked 
straight across at Keith and grinned. 

“ It’s queer, devilish queer,” he said. 

Don’t you think so, Keith? ” He was an 
Englishman, and his blue eyes shone with 
a grim, cold humor. ‘‘And funny,” he 
added. 


4 


THE RIVER’S END 

Queer, but not funny,partly agreed 
Keith. 

“Yes, it is funny,” maintained Connis- 
ton. “Just twenty-seven months ago, lack¬ 
ing three days, I was sent out to get you, 
Keith. I was told to bring you in dead 
or alive—and at the end of the twenty- 
sixth month I got you, alive. And as a 
sporting proposition you deserve a hundred 
years of life instead of the noose, Keith, for 
you led me a chase that took me through 
seven different kinds of hell before I 
landed you. I froze, and I starved, and I 
drowned. I haven’t seen a white woman’s 
face in eighteen months. It was terrible. 
But I beat you at last. That’s the jolly 
good part of it, Keith—I beat you and got 
you, and there's the proof of it on your 
wrists this minute. I won. Do you con¬ 
cede that? You must be fair, old top, • 
because this is the last big game I’ll ever 
play.” There was a break, a yearning that 
was almost plaintive, in his voice. 

Keith nodded. “ You won,” he said. 

“ You won so square that when the frost 
got your lung-” 

“ You didn’t take advantage of me,” in- 


THE RIVER’S END 


5 

terrupted Conniston. “That’s the funny 
part of it, Keith. That’s where the humor 
comes in. I had you all tied up and 
scheduled for the hangman when—bing! 
—along comes a cold snap that bites a 
corner of my lung, and the tables are 
turned. And instead of doing to me as 1 
was going to do to you, instead of killing 
me or making your getaway while I was 
helpless—Keith—old pal —youve tried to 
nurse me back to life! Isn’t that funny? 
Could anything be funnier? ” 

He reached a hand across the table and 
gripped Keith’s. And then, for a few 
moments, he bowed his head while his 
body was convulsed by another racking 
cough. Keith sensed the pain of it in the 
convulsive clutching of Conniston’s fingers 
about his own. When Conniston raised his 
face, the red stain was on his lips again. 

“ You see, I’ve got it figured out to the 
day,” he went on, wiping away the stain 
with a cloth already dyed red. “ This is 
Thursday. I won’t see another Sunday. 
It’ll come Friday night or some time Sat¬ 
urday. I’ve seen this frosted lung business 
a dozen times. Understand? I’ve got two 


6 THE RIVER’S END 

sure days ahead of me, possibly a third. 
Then you’ll have to dig a hole and bury 
me. After that you will no longer be held 
by the word of honor you gave me when 
I slipped off your manacles. And I’m ask¬ 
ing you —what are you going to do? 

In Keith’s face were written deeply the 
lines of suffering and of tragedy. Yester¬ 
day they had compared ages. He was 
thirty-eight, only a little younger than the 
man who had run him down and who in 
the hour of his achievement was dying. 
They had not put the fact plainly before. 
It had been a matter of some little embar¬ 
rassment for Keith, who at another time 
had found it easier to kill a man than to 
tell this man that he was going to die. 
Now that Conniston had measured his own 
span definitely and with most amazing 
coolness, a load was lifted from Keith’s 
shoulders. Over the table they looked into 
each other’s eyes, and this time it was 
Keith’s fingers that tightened about Con- 
niston’s. They looked like brothers in the 
sickly glow of the seal-oil lamp. 

“What are you going to do?” repeated 
Conniston. 


THE RIVER’S END 7 

Keith’s face aged even as the dying 
Englishman stared at him. I suppose— 
I’ll go back,” he said heavily. 

You mean to Coronation Gulf? You’ll 
return to that stinking mess of Eskimo 
igloos? If you do, you’ll go mad!” 

I expect to,” said Keith. “ But it’s the 
only thing left. You know that. You of 
all men must know how they’ve hunted me. 
If I went south-” 

It was Conniston’s turn to nod his head, 
slowly and thoughtfully. Yes, of course,” 
he agreed. “They’re hunting you hard, 
and you’re giving ’em a bully chase. But 
they’ll get you, even up there. And I’m— 
sorry.” 

Their hands unclasped. Conniston filled 
his pipe and lighted it. Keith noticed that 
he held the lighted taper without a tremor. 
The nerve of the man was magnificent. 

“ I’m sorry,” he said again. “ I—like 
you. Do you know, Keith, I wish we’d 
been born brothers and you hadn’t killed a 
man. That night I slipped the ring-dogs 
on you I felt almost like a devil. I 
wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t for this bally 
lung. But what’s the use of keeping it 



THE RIVER’S END 


8 

back now? It doesn’t seem fair to keep 
a man up in that place for three years, run¬ 
ning from hole to hole like a rat, and then 
take him down for a hanging. I know it 
isn’t fair in your case. I feel it. I don’t 
mean to be inquisitive, old chap, but I’m 
not believing Departmental ‘ facts ’ any 
more. I’d make a topping good wager 
you’re not the sort they make you out. 
And so I’d like to know—just why—you 
killed Judge Kirkstone? ” 

Keith’s two fists knotted in the center of 
the table. Conniston saw his blue eyes 
darken for an instant with a savage fire. 
In that moment there came a strange 
silence over the cabin, and in that silence 
the incessant and maddening yapping of 
the little white foxes rose shrilly over the 
distant booming and rumbling of the ice. 


II 


HY did I kill Judge Kirkstone?” 



W Keith repeated the words slowly. 
His clenched hands relaxed, but his eyes 
held the steady glow of fire. “ What do 
the Departmental ‘ facts ’ tell you, Con- 
niston? ” 

‘‘ That you murdered him in cold blood, 
and that the honor of the Service is at 
stake until you are hung.” 

There’s a lot in the view-point, isn’t 
there? What if I said I didn’t kill Judge 
Kirkstone? ” 

Conniston leaned forward a little too 
eagerly. The deadly paroxysm shook his 
frame again, and when it was over his 
breath came pantingly, as if hissing 
through a sieve. “ My God, not Sunday 
—or Saturday,” he breathed. “ Keith, it’s 
coming tomorrow! 

“ No, no, not then,” said Keith, choking 
back something that rose in his throat. 
“ You’d better lie down again.” 


9 


lo THE RIVER’S END 

Conniston gathered new strength. 

And die like a rabbit? No, thank you, 
old chapl I’m after facts, and you can’t 
lie to a dying man. Did you kill Judge 
Kirkstone? ” 

I—don’t—know,” replied Keith slowly, 
looking steadily into the other’s eyes. I 
think so, and yet I am not positive. I 
went to his home that night with the de¬ 
termination to wring justice from him or 
kill him. I wish you could look at it all 
with my eyes, Conniston. You could if 
you had known my father. You see, my 
mother died when I was a little chap, and 
my father and I grew up together, chums. 
I don’t believe I ever thought of him as 
just simply a father. Fathers are common. 
He was more than that. From the time I 
was ten years old we were inseparable. I 
guess I was twenty before he told me of 
the deadly feud that existed between him 
and Kirkstone, and it never troubled me 
much—because I didn’t think anything 
would ever come of it—^until Kirkstone got 
him. Then I realized that all through the 
years the old rattlesnake had been watch¬ 
ing for his chance. It was a frame-up 


THE RIVER’S END 


II 


from beginning to end, and my father 
stepped into the trap. Even then he 
thought that his political enemies, and not 
Kirkstone, were at the bottom of it. We 
soon discovered the truth. My father got 
ten years. He was innocent. And the only 
man on earth who could prove his inno¬ 
cence was Kirkstone, the man who was 
gloating like a Shylock over his pound 
of flesh. Conniston, if you had known 
these things and had been in my shoes, 
what would you have done?” 

Conniston, lighting another taper over 
the oil flame, hesitated and answered: I 
don’t know yet, old chap. What did you 
do?” 

‘‘ I fairly got down on my knees to the 
scoundrel,” resumed Keith. “ If ever a 
man begged for another man’s life, I 
begged for my father’s—for the few words 
from Kirkstone that would set him free. 
I offered everything I had in the world, 
even my body and soul. God, I’ll never 
forget that night! He sat there, fat and 
oily, two big rings on his stubby fingers— 
a monstrous toad in human form—and he 
chuckled and laughed at me in his joy, as 


12 


THE RIVER’S END 


though I were a mountebank playing 
amusing tricks for him—and there my soul 
was bleeding itself out before his eyes! 
And his son came in, fat and oily and ac¬ 
cursed like his father, and he laughed at 
me. I didn’t know that such hatred could 
exist in the world, or that vengeance could 
bring such hellish joy. I could still hear 
their gloating laughter when I stumbled 
out into the night. It haunted me. I 
heard it in the trees. It came in the wind. 
My brain was filled with it—and suddenly 
I turned back, and I went into that house 
again without knocking, and I faced the 
two of them alone once more in that room. 
And this time, Conniston, I went back to 
get justice—or to kill. Thus far it was 
premeditated, but I went with my naked 
hands. There was a key in the door, and 
I locked it. Then I made my demand. I 
wasted no words-” 

Keith rose from the table and began to 
pace back and forth. The wind had died 
again. They could hear the yapping of the 
foxes and the low thunder of the ice. 

“ The son began it,” said Keith. ‘‘ He 




’ THE RIVER’S END 13 

sprang at me. I struck him. We grap¬ 
pled, and then the beast himself leaped at 
me with some sort of weapon in his hand. 
I couldn’t see what it was, but it was heavy. 
The first blow almost broke my shoulder. 
In the scuffle I wrenched it from his hand, 
and then I found it was a long, rectangular 
bar of copper made for a paper-weight. 
In that same instant I saw the son snatch 
up a similar object from the table, and in 
the act he smashed the table light. In 
darkness we fought. I did not feel that I 
was fighting men. They were monsters 
and gave me the horrible sensation of be¬ 
ing in darkness with crawling serpents. 
Yes, I struck hard. And the son was 
striking, and neither of us could see. I felt 
my weapon hit, and it was then that Kirk- 
stone crumpled down with a blubbery 
wheeze. You know what happened after 
that. The next morning only one copper 
weight was found in that room. The son 
had done away with the other. And the 
one that was left was covered with Kirk- 
stone’s blood and hair. There was no 
chance for me. So I got away. Six 


THE RIVER’S END 


14 

months later my father died in prison, and 
for three years IVe been hunted as a fox 
is hunted by the hounds. That’s all, Con- 
niston. Did I kill Judge Kirkstone? 
And, if I killed him, do you think I’m 
sorry for it, even though I hang? ” 

Sit down! ” 

The Englishman’s voice was command¬ 
ing. Keith dropped back to his seat, 
breathing hard. He saw a strange light 
in the steely blue eyes of Conniston. 

“ Keith, when a man knows he’s going 
to live, he is blind to a lot of things. But 
when he knows he’s going to die, it’s dif¬ 
ferent. If you had told me that story a 
month ago, I’d have taken you down to 
the hangman just the same. It would have 
been my duty, you know, and I might have 
argued you were lying. But you can’t lie 
to me—now. Kirkstone deserved to die. 
And so I’ve made up my mind whar you’re 
going to do. You’re not going back to 
Coronation Gulf. You’re going south. 
You’re going back into God’s country 
again. And you’re not going as John 
Keith, the murderer, but as Derwent Con¬ 
niston of His Majesty’s Royal Northwest 


THE RIVER’S END 15 

Mounted Police! Do you get me, Keith? 
Do you understand? ” 

Keith simply stared. The Englishman 
twisted a mustache, a half-humorous gleam 
in his eyes. He had been thinking of this 
plan of his for some time, and he had 
foreseen just how it would take Keith off 
his feet. 

‘‘ Quite a scheme, don’t you think, old 
chap? I like you. I don’t mind saying 
I think a lot of you, and there isn’t any 
reason on earth why you shouldn’t go on 
living in my shoes. There’s no moral ob¬ 
jection. No one will miss me. I was the 
black sheep back in England—younger 
brother and all that—and when I had to 
choose between Africa and Canada, I chose 
Canada. An Englishman’s pride is the 
biggest fool thing on earth, Keith, and I 
suppose all of them over there think I’m 
dead. They haven’t heard from me in six 
or seven years. I’m forgotten. And the 
beautiful thing about this scheme is that 
we look so deucedly alike, you know. 
Trim that mustache and beard of yours a 
little, add a bit of a scar over your right 
eye, and you can walk in on old McDowell 


i6 THE RIVER’S END 

himself, and I’ll wager he’ll jump up and 
say, ‘ Bless my heart, if it isn’t Conniston! ’ 
That’s all I’ve got to leave you, Keith, a 
dead man’s clothes and name. But you’re 
welcome. They’ll be of no more use to me 
after tomorrow.” 

Impossible! ” gasped Keith. “ Connis¬ 
ton, do you know what you are saying? ” 
“ Positively, old chap. I count every 
word, because it hurts when I talk. So 
you won’t argue with me, please. It’s the 
biggest sporting thing that’s ever come my 
way. I’ll be dead. You can bury me 
under this floor, where the foxes can’t 
get at me. But my name will go on living 
and you’ll wear my clothes back to civi¬ 
lization and tell McDowell how you got 
your man and how he died up here with 
a frosted lung. As proof of it you’ll lug 
your own clothes down in a bundle along 
with any other little identifying things you 
may have, and there’s a sergeancy waiting. 
McDowell promised it to you—if you got 
your man. Understand? And McDowell 
hasn’t seen me for two years and three 
months, so if I might look a bit different 
to him, it would be natural, for you and I 


THE RIVER’S END 17 

have been on the rough edge of the world 
all that time. The jolly good part of it 
all is that we look so much alike. I say 
the idea is splendid!” 

Conniston rose above the presence of 
death in the thrill of the great gamble he 
was projecting. And Keith, whose heart 
was pounding like an excited fist, saw in a 
flash the amazing audacity of the thing 
that was in Conniston’s mind, and felt the 
responsive thrill of its possibilities. No 
one down there would recognize in him 
the John Keith of four years ago. Then 
he was smooth-faced, with shoulders that 
stooped a little and a body that was not 
too strong. Now he was an animal! A 
four years’ fight with the raw things of 
life had made him that, and inch for inch 
he measured up with Conniston. And 
Conniston, sitting opposite him, looked 
enough like him to be a twin brother. He 
seemed to read the thought in Keith’s 
mind. There was an amused glitter in his 
eyes. 

‘‘ I suppose it’s largely because of the 
hair on our faces,” he said. “You know 
a beard can cover a multitude of physical 


i8 THE RIVER’S END 

sins—and differences, old chap. I wore 
mine two years before I started out after 
you, vandyked rather carefully, you under¬ 
stand, so you’d better not use a razor. 
Ph^^sically you won’t run a ghost of a 
chance of being caught. You’ll look the 
part. The real fun is coming in other 
ways. In the next twenty-four hours 
you’ve got to learn by heart the history of 
Derwent Conniston from the day he 
joined the Royal Mounted. We won’t go 
back further than that, for it wouldn’t 
interest you, and ancient history won’t 
turn up to trouble you. Your biggest 
danger will be with McDowell, command¬ 
ing F Division at Prince Albert. He’s a 
human fox of the old military school, mus¬ 
taches and all, and he can see through 
boiler-plate. But he’s got a big heart. 
He has been a good friend of mine, so 
along with Dement Conniston’s story 
you’ve got to load up with a lot about 
McDowell, too. There are many things— 
oh, God - 

He flung a hand to his chest. Grim 
horror settled in the little cabin as the 
cough convulsed him. And over it the 



THE RIVER’S END 


19 

wind shrieked again, swallowing up the 
yapping of the foxes and the rumble of 
the ice. 

That night, in the yellow sputter of the 
seal-oil lamp, the fight began. Grim-faced 
—one realizing the nearness of death and 
struggling to hold it back, the other pray¬ 
ing for time—two men went through the 
amazing process of trading their identities. 
From the beginning it was Conniston’s 
fight. And Keith, looking at him, knew 
that in this last mighty effort to die game 
the Englishman was narrowing the slight 
margin of hours ahead of him. Keith had 
loved but one man, his father. In this 
fight he learned to love another, Connis- 
ton. And once he cried out bitterly that 
it was unfair, that Conniston should live 
and he should die. The dying Englishman 
smiled and laid a hand on his, and Keith 
felt that the hand was damp with a cold 
sweat. 

Through the terrible hours that fol¬ 
lowed Keith felt the strength and courage 
of the dying man becoming slowly a part 
of himself. The thing was epic. Con¬ 
niston, throttling his own agony, was mag- 


20 


THE RIVER’S END 

nificent. And Keith felt his warped and 
despairing soul swelling with a new life 
and a new hope, and he was thrilled by 
the thought of what he must do to live up 
to the mark of the Englishman. Connis- 
ton’s story was of the important things 
first. It began with his acquaintance with 
McDowell. And then, between the 
paroxysms that stained his lips red, he 
filled in with incident and smiled wanly as 
he told how McDowell had sworn him to 
secrecy once in the matter of an incident 
which the chief did not want the barracks 
to know—and laugh over. A very sensi¬ 
tive man in some ways was McDowell! 
At the end of the first hour Keith stood up 
in the middle of the floor, and with his 
arms resting on the table and his shoulders 
sagging Conniston put him through the 
drill. After that he gave Keith his worn 
Service Manual and commanded him to 
study while he rested. Keith helped him 
to his bunk, and for a time after that tried 
to read the Service book. But his eyes 
blurred, and his brain refused to obey. 
The agony in the Englishman’s low breath¬ 
ing oppressed him with a physical pain. 


21 


THE RIVER’S END 

Keith felt himself choking and rose at last 
from the table and went out into the gray, 
ghostly twilight of the night. 

His lungs drank in the ice-tanged air. 
But it was not cold. Kwaske-hoo —the 
change—had come. The air was filled 
with the tumult of the last fight of winter 
against the invasion of spring, and the 
forces of winter were crumbling. The 
earth under Keith’s feet trembled in the 
mighty throes of their dissolution. He 
could hear more clearly the roar and snarl 
and rending thunder of the great fields of 
ice as they swept down with the arctic 
current into Hudson’s Bay. Over him 
hovered a strange night. It was not black 
but a weird and wraith-like gray, and out 
of this sepulchral chaos came strange 
sounds and the moaning of a wind high 
up. A little while longer, Keith thought, 
and the thing would have driven him mad. 
Even now he fancied he heard the scream¬ 
ing and wailing of voices far up under the 
hidden stars. More than once in the past 
months he had listened to the sobbing of 
little children, the agony of weeping 
women, and the taunting of wind voices 


22 


THE RIVER’S END 


that were either tormenting or crying out 
in a ghoulish triumph; and more than once 
in those months he had seen Eskimos— 
born in that hell but driven mad in the 
torture of its long night—rend the clothes 
from their bodies and plunge naked out 
into the pitiless gloom and cold to die. 
Conniston would never know how near the 
final breakdown his brain had been in that 
hour when he made him a prisoner. And 
Keith had not told him. The man-hunter 
had saved him from going mad. But 
Keith had kept that secret to himself. 

Even now he shrank down as a blast of 
wind shot out of the chaos above and 
smote the cabin with a shriek that had in 
it a peculiarly penetrating note. And then 
he squared his shoulders and laughed, and 
the yapping of the foxes no longer filled 
him with a shuddering torment. Beyond 
them he was seeing home. God’s country! 
Green forests and waters spattered with 
golden sun—things he had almost forgot¬ 
ten; once more the faces of women who 
were white. And with those faces he 
heard the voice of his people and the song 
of birds and felt under his feet the velvety 


THE RIVER’S END 


23 

touch of earth that was bathed in the aroma 
of flowers. Yes, he had almost forgotten 
those things. Yesterday they had been 
with him only as moldering skeletons— 
phantasmal dream-things—because he was 
going mad, but now they were real, they 
were just off there to the south, and he was 
going to them. He stretched up his arms, 
and a cry rose out of his throat. It was 
of triumph, of final exaltation. Three 
years of that —and he had lived through 
it! Three years of dodging from burrow 
to burrow, just as Conniston had said, like 
a hunted fox; three years of starvation, of 
freezing, of loneliness so great that his soul 
had broken—and now he was going home! 

He turned again to the cabin, and when 
he entered the pale face of the dying Eng¬ 
lishman greeted him from the dim glow 
of the yellow light at the table. And Con¬ 
niston was smiling in a quizzical, distressed 
sort of way, with a hand at his chest. His 
open watch on the table pointed to the 
hour of midnight when the lesson went on. 

Still later he heated the muzzle of his 
revolver in the flame of the seal-oil. 

“It will hurt, old chap—putting this 


24 THE RIVER’S END 

scar over your eye. But it’s got to be done. 
I say, won’t it be a ripping joke on Mc¬ 
Dowell?” Softly he repeated it, smiling 
into Keith’s eyes. ripping joke—on 

McDowell 1 ” 



“REMEMBER, OLD CHAP, YOU WIN OR LOSE THE MOMENT 

McDowell first sets his eyes on you?” 


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Ill 


D awn— the dusk of another night—^ 
and Keith raised his haggard face 
from Conniston’s bedside with a woman’s 
sob on his lips. The Englishman had died 
as he knew that he would die, game to the 
last threadbare breath that came out of his 
body. For with this last breath he whis¬ 
pered the words which he had repeated a 
dozen times before, “ Remember, old chap, 
you win or lose the moment McDowell 
first sets his eyes on you! ” And then, with 
a strange kind of sob in his chest, he was 
gone, and Keith’s eyes were blinded by the 
miracle of a hot flood of tears, and there 
rose in him a mighty pride in the name of 
Derwent Conniston. 

It was his name now. John Keith was 
dead. It was Derwent Conniston who was 
living. And as he looked down into the 
cold, still face of the heroic Englishman, 
the thing did not seem so strange to him 


26 


THE RIVER’S END 


after all. It would not be difficult to bear 
Conniston’s name; the difficulty would be 
in living up to the Conniston code. 

That night the rumble of the ice fields 
was clearer because there was no wind to 
deaden their tumult. The sky was cloud¬ 
less, and the stars were like glaring, yellow 
eyes peering through holes in a vast, over¬ 
hanging curtain of jet black. Keith, out 
to fill his lungs wdth air, looked up at the 
phenomenon of the polar night and shud¬ 
dered. The stars were like living things, 
and they were looking at him. Under 
their sinister glow the foxes were holding 
high carnival. It seemed to Keith that 
they had drawn a closer circle about the 
cabin and that there was a different note 
in their yapping now, a note that was more 
persistent, more horrible. Conniston had 
foreseen that closing-in of the little white 
beasts of the night, and Keith, reentering 
the cabin, set about the fulfillment of his 
promise. Ghostly dawn ^ound his task 
completed. 

Half an hour later he stood in the edge 
of the scrub timber that rimmed in the 
arctic plain, and looked for the last time 


THE RIVER’S END 


27 

upon the little cabin under the floor of 
which the Englishman was buried. It 
stood there splendidly unafraid in its ter¬ 
rible loneliness, a proud monument to a 
dead man’s courage and a dead man’s 
soul. Within its four walls it treasured a 
thing which gave to it at last a reason for 
being, a reason for fighting against disso¬ 
lution as long as one log could hold upon 
another. Conniston’s spirit had become a 
living part of it, and the foxes might yap 
everlastingly, and the winds howl, and 
winter follow winter, and long night fol¬ 
low long night—and it would stand there 
in its pride fighting to the last, a memorial 
to Derwent Conniston, the Englishman. 

Looking back at it, Keith bared his head 
in the raw dawn. “ God bless you, Con¬ 
niston,” he whispered, and turned slowly 
away and into the south. 

Ahead of him was eight hundred miles 
of wilderness—eight hundred miles be¬ 
tween him and the little town on the Sas¬ 
katchewan where McDowell commanded 
F Division of the Royal Mounted. The 
thought of distance did not appal him. 
Four years at the top of the earth had a<- 


28 THE RIVER’S END 

customed him to the illimitable and had 
inured him to the lack of things. That 
winter Conniston had followed him with 
the tenacity of a ferret for a thousand miles 
along the rim of the Arctic, and it had 
been a miracle that he had not killed the 
Englishman. A score of times he might 
have ended the exciting chase without 
staining his own hands. His Eskimo 
friends would have performed the deed at 
a word. But he had let the Englishman 
live, and Conniston, dead, was sending him 
back home. Eight hundred miles was but 
the step between. 

He had no dogs or sledge. His own 
team had given up the ghost long ago, and 
a treacherous Kogmollock from the Roes 
Welcome had stolen the Englishman’s out¬ 
fit in the last lap of their race down from 
Fullerton’s Point. What he carried was 
Conniston’s, with the exception of his rifle 
and his own parka and hood. He even 
wore Conniston’s watch. His pack was 
light. The chief articles it contained were 
a little flour, a three-pound tent, a sleep¬ 
ing-bag, and certain articles of identifica¬ 
tion to prove the death of John Keith, the 


THE RIVER’S END 


29 

outlaw. Hour after hour of that first day 
the zip, zip, zip of his snowshoes beat with 
deadly monotony upon his brain. He 
could not think. Time and again it 
seemed to him that something was pulling 
him back, and always he was hearing Con- 
niston’s voice and seeing Conniston’s face 
in the gray gloom of the day about him. 
He passed through the slim finger of scrub 
timber that a strange freak of nature had 
flung across the plain, and once more was a 
moving speck in a wide and wind-swept 
barren. In the afternoon he made out a 
dark rim on the southern horizon and 
knew it was timber, real timber, the first 
he had seen since that day, a year and a 
half ago, when the last of the Mackenzie 
River forest had faded away behind him! 
It gave him, at last, something tangible to 
grip. It was a thing beckoning to him, a 
sentient, living wall beyond which was his 
other world. The eight hundred miles 
meant less to him than the space between 
himself and that growing, black rim on the 
horizon. 

He reached it as the twilight of the day 
was dissolving into the deeper dusk of the 


30 THE RIVER’S END 

nightj and put up his tent in the shelter 
of a clump of gnarled and storm-beaten 
spruce. Then he gathered wood and built 
himself a fire. He did not count the sticks 
as he had counted them for eighteen 
months. He was wasteful, prodigal. He 
had traveled forty miles since morning but 
he felt no exhaustion. He gathered wood 
until he had a great pile of it, and the 
flames of his fire leaped higher and higher 
until the spruce needles crackled and 
hissed over his head. He boiled a pot of 
weak tea and made a supper of caribou 
meat and a bit of bannock. Then he sat 
with his back to a tree and stared into 
the flames. 

The fire leaping and crackling before 
his eyes was like a powerful medicine. It 
stirred things that had lain dormant within 
him. It consumed the heavy dross of four 
years of stupefying torture and brought 
back to him vividly the happenings of a 
yesterday that had dragged itself on like 
a century. All at once he seemed un¬ 
burdened of shackles that had weighted 
him down to the point of madness. Every 
fiber in his body responded to that glorious 


THE RIVER’S END 


31 

roar of the fire; a thing seemed to snap in 
his head, freeing it of an oppressive bond¬ 
age, and in the heart of the flames he saw 
home, and hope, and life—the things 
familiar and precious long ago, which the 
scourge of the north had almost beaten 
dead in his memory. He saw the broad 
Saskatchewan shimmering its way through 
the yellow plains, banked in by the foot¬ 
hills and the golden mists of morning 
dawn; he saw his home town clinging to 
its shore on one side and with its back 
against the purple wilderness on the other; 
he heard the rhythmic chug, chug, chug 
of the old gold dredge and the rattle of 
its chains as it devoured its tons of sand 
for a few grains of treasure; over him 
there were lacy clouds in a blue heaven 
again, he heard the sound of voices, the 
tread of feet, laughter—life. His soul 
reborn, he rose to his feet and stretched 
his arms until the muscles snapped. No, 
they would not know him back there— 
now! He laughed softly as he thought 
of the old John Keith—^‘Johnny” they 
used to call him up and down the few 
balsam-scented streets—his father’s right- 


THE RIVER’S END 


32 

Tiand man mentally but a little off feed, as 
his chum, Reddy McTabb, used to say, 
when it came to the matter of muscle and 
brawn. He could look back on things 
without excitement now. Even hatred 
had burned itself out, and he found him¬ 
self wondering if old Judge Kirkstone’s 
house looked the same on the top of the 
hill, and if Miriam Kirkstone had come 
back to live there after that terrible night 
when he had returned to avenge his father. 
Four years! It was not so very long, 
though the years had seemed like a life¬ 
time to him. There would not be many 
changes. Everything would be the same— 
everything—except—the old home. That 
home he and his father had planned, and 
they had overseen the building of it, a 
chateau of logs a little distance from the 
town, with the Saskatchewan sweeping be¬ 
low it and the forest at its doors. Master¬ 
less, it must have seen changes in those 
four years. 

Fumbling in his pocket, his fingers 
touched Conniston’s watch. He drew it 
out and let the firelight play on the open 
dial. It was ten o’clock. In the back of 


THE RIVER’S END 


33 

the premier half of the case Conniston had 
at some time or another pasted a picture. 
It must have been a long time ago, for the 
face was faded and indistinct. The eyes 
alone were undimmed, and in the flash of 
the fire they took on a living glow as they 
looked at Keith. It was the face of a 
young girl—a schoolgirl, Keith thought, of 
ten or twelve. Yet the eyes seemed older; 
they seemed pleading with someone, speak¬ 
ing a message that had come spontaneously 
out of the soul of the child. Keith closed 
the watch. Its tick, tick, tick rose louder 
to his ears. He dropped it in his pocket. 
He could still hear it. 

A pitch-filled spruce knot exploded with 
the startling vividness of a star bomb, and 
with it came a dull sort of mental shock to 
Keith. He was sure that for an instant 
he had seen Conniston’s face and that the 
Englishman’s eyes were looking at him as 
the eyes had looked at him out of the face 
in the watch. The deceptio visus was so 
real that it sent him back a step, staring, 
and then, his eyes striving to catch the il¬ 
lusion again, there fell upon him a realiza¬ 
tion of the tremendous strain he had been 


34 the RIVER’S END 

under for many hours. It had been days 
since he had slept soundly. Yet he was 
not sleepy now; he scarcely felt fatigue. 
The instinct of self-preservation made him 
arrange his sleeping-bag on a carpet of 
spruce boughs in the tent and go to 
bed. 

Even then, for a long time, he lay in 
the grip of a harrowing wakefulness. He 
closed his eyes, but it was impossible for 
him to hold them closed. The sounds of 
the night came to him with painful dis¬ 
tinctness—the crackling of the fire, the ser¬ 
pent-like hiss of the flaming pitch, the 
whispering of the tree tops, and the steady 
tick, tick, tick of Conniston’s watch. And 
out on the barren, through the rim of shel¬ 
tering trees, the wind was beginning to 
moan its everlasting whimper and sob of 
loneliness. In spite of his clenched hands 
and his fighting determination to hold it 
off, Keith fancied that he heard again— 
riding strangely in that wind—the sound 
of Conniston’s voice. And suddenly he 
asked himself: What did it mean? What 
was it that Conniston had forgotten? 
What was it that Conniston had been try- 


THE RIVER’S END 


35 

ing to tell him all that day, when he had 
felt the presence of him in the gloom of 
the Barrens? Was it that Conniston 
wanted him to come back? 

He tried to rid himself of the depress¬ 
ing insistence of that thought. And yet 
he was certain that in the last half-hour 
before death entered the cabin the Eng¬ 
lishman had wanted to tell him something 
and had crucified the desire. There was 
the triumph of an iron courage in those 
last words, “ Remember, old chap, you win 
or lose the moment McDowell first sets his 
eyes on you!”—but in the next instant, as 
death sent home its thrust, Keith had 
caught a glimpse of Conniston’s naked 
soul, and in that final moment when speech 
was gone forever, he knew that Conniston 
was fighting to make his lips utter words 
which he had left unspoken until too late. 
And Keith, listening to the moaning of 
the wind and the crackling of the fire, 
found himself repeating over and over 
again, “ What was it he wanted to say? ” 
In a lull in the wind Conniston’s watch 
seemed to beat like a heart in its case, and 
swiftly its tick, tick, ticked to his ears an 


THE RIVER’S END 


36 

answer, “ Come back, come back, come 
back! ” 

With a cry at his own pitiable weakness, 
Keith thrust the thing far under his sleep¬ 
ing-bag, and there its sound was smothered. 
At last sleep overcame him like a restless 
anesthesia. 

With the break of another day he came 
out of his tent and stirred the fire. There 
were still bits of burning ember, and these 
he fanned into life and added to their 
flame fresh fuel. He could not easily for¬ 
get last night’s torture, but its significance 
was gone. He laughed at his own folly 
and wondered what Conniston himself 
would have thought of his nervousness. 
For the first time in years he thought of 
the old days down at college where, among 
other things, he had made a mark for 
himself in psychology. He had considered 
himself an expert in the discussion and 
understanding of phenomena of the mind. 
Afterward he had lived up to the mark 
and had profited by his beliefs, and the 
fact that a simple relaxation of his mental 
machinery had so disturbed him last night 
amused him now. The solution was easy. 


THE RIVER’S END 


37 

It was his mind struggling to equilibrium 
after four years of brain-fag. And he felt 
better. His brain was clearer. He lis¬ 
tened to the watch and found its ticking 
natural. He braced himself to another 
effort and whistled as he prepared his 
breakfast. 

After that he packed his dunnage and 
continued south. He wondered if Con- 
niston ever knew his Manual as he learned 
it now. At the end of the sixth day he 
could repeat it from cover to cover. Every 
hour he made it a practice to stop short 
and salute the trees about him. McDowell 
would not catch him there. 

“ I am Derwent Conniston,” he kept tell¬ 
ing himself. “John Keith is dead—dead. 
I buried him back there under the cabin, 
the cabin built by Sergeant Trossy and his 
patrol in nineteen hundred and eight. My 
name is Conniston—Derwent Conniston.” 

In his years of aloneness he had grown 
into the habit of talking to himself—or 
with himself—to keep up his courage and 
sanity. Keith, old boy, we’ve got to fight 
it out,” he v/ould say. Now it was, “ Con¬ 
niston, old chap, we’ll win or die.” After 


THE RIVER’S END 


38 

the third day, he never spoke of John 
Keith except as a man who was dead. And 
over the dead John Keith he spread Con- 
niston’s mantle. ^^John Keith died game, 
sir,” he said to McDowell, who was a tree. 
“ He was the finest chap I ever knew.” 

On this sixth day came the miracle. For 
the first time in many months John Keith 
saw the sun. He had seen the murky glow 
of it before this, fighting to break through 
the pall of fog and haze that hung over 
the Barrens, but this sixth day it was the 
sun, the real sun, bursting in all its glory 
for a short space over the northern world. 
Each day after this the sun was nearer and 
warmer, as the arctic vapor clouds and 
frost smoke were left farther behind, and 
not until he had passed beyond the ice fogs 
entirely did Keith swing westward. He 
did not hurry, for now that he was out of 
his prison, he wanted time in which to feel 
the first exhilarating thrill of his freedom. 
And more than all else he knew that he 
must measure and test himself for the tre¬ 
mendous fight ahead of him. 

Now that the sun and the blue sky had 
cleared his brain, he saw the hundred pit- 


THE RIVER’S END 


39 

falls in his way, the hundred little slips 
that might be made, the hundred traps 
waiting for any chance blunder on his 
part. Deliberately he was on his way to 
the hangman. Down there—every day of 
his life—he would rub elbows with him as 
he passed his fellow men in the street. He 
would never completely feel himself out 
of the presence of death. Day and night 
he must watch himself and guard himself, 
his tongue, his feet, his thoughts, never 
knowing in what hour the eyes of the law 
would pierce the veneer of his disguise and 
deliver his life as the forfeit. There were 
times when the contemplation of these 
things appalled him, and his mind turned 
to other channels of escape. And then—• 
always—he heard Conniston’s cool, fight¬ 
ing voice, and the red blood fired up in 
his veins, and he faced home. 

He was Derwent Conniston. And never 
for an hour could he put out of his mind 
the one great mystifying question in this 
adventure of life and death, who was Der¬ 
went Conniston? Shred by shred he 
pieced together what little he knew, and 
always he arrived at the same futile end. 


|o THE RIVER’S END 

An Englishman, dead to his family if he 
Had one, an outcast or an expatriate—and 
the finest, bravest gentleman he had ever 
known. It was the whyfore of these things 
that stirred within him an emotion which 
he had never experienced before. The 
Englishman had grimly and determinedly 
taken his secret to the grave with him. To 
him, John Keith—^who was now Derwent 
Conniston—he had left an heritage of deep 
mystery and the mission, if he so chose, of 
discovering who he was, whence he had 
come—and why. Often he looked at the 
young girl’s picture in the watch, and 
always he saw in her eyes something which 
made him think of Conniston as he lay in 
the last hour of his life. Undoubtedly the 
girl had grown into a woman now. 

Days grew into weeks, and under Keith’s 
feet the wet, sweet-smelling earth rose up 
through the last of the slush snow. Three 
hundred miles below the Barrens, he was 
in the Reindeer Lake country early in 
May. For a week he rested at a trapper’s 
cabin on the Burntwood, and after that set 
out for Cumberland House. Ten days 
later he arrived at the post, and in the 


THE RIVER’S END 


41 

sunlit glow of the second evening after¬ 
ward he built his camp-fire on the shore of 
the yellow Saskatchewan. 

The mighty river, beloved from the days 
of his boyhood, sang to him again, that 
night, the wonderful things that time and 
grief had dimmed in his heart. The moon 
rose over it, a warm wind drifted out of 
the south, and Keith, smoking his pipe, 
sat for a long time listening to the soft 
murmur of it as it rolled past at his feet. 
For him it had always been more than the 
river. He had grown up with it, and 
it had become a part of him; it had 
mothered his earliest dreams and ambi¬ 
tions; on it he had sought his first adven¬ 
tures; it had been his chum, his friend, 
and his comrade, and the fancy struck him 
that in the murmuring voice of it tonight 
there was a gladness, a welcome, an exulta¬ 
tion in his return. He looked out on its 
silvery bars shimmering in the moonlight, 
and a flood of memories swept upon him. 
Thirty years was not so long ago that he 
could not remember the beautiful mother 
who had told him stories as the sun went 
down and bedtime drew near. And 


42 THE RIVER’S END 

vividly there stood out the wonderful tales 
of Kistachiu'un, th^ river; how it was born 
away over in the mystery of the western 
mountains, away from the eyes and feet of 
men; how it came down from the moun¬ 
tains into the hills, and through the hills 
into the plains, broadening and deepening 
and growing mightier with every mile, 
until at last it swept past their door, bear¬ 
ing with it the golden grains of sand that 
made men rich. His father had pointed 
out the deep-beaten trails of buffalo to him 
'and had told him stories of the Indians 
and of the land before white men came, so 
that between father and^ mother the river 
became his book of fables, his wonderland, 
the never-ending source of his treasured 
tales of childhood. And tonight the river 
was the one thing left to him. It was the 
one friend he could claim again, the one 
comrade he could open his arms to with¬ 
out fear of betrayal. And with the grief 
for things that once had lived and were 
now dead, there came over him a strange 
sort of happiness, the spirit of the great 
river itself giving him consolation. 

Stretching out his arms, he cried: My 


THE RIVER’S END 


43 

old river—it’s me—^Johnny Keith! I’ve 
come back! ” 

And the river, whispering, seemed to 
answer him: It’s Johnny Keith! And 
he’s come back! He’s come backl ” 


IV 


F or a week John Keith followed up the 
shores of the Saskatchewan. It was a 
hundred and forty miles from the Hudson’E 
Bay Company’s post of Cumberland House 
to Prince Albert as the crow would fly, 
but Keith did not travel a homing line. 
Only now and then did he take advantage 
of a portage trail. Clinging to the river, 
his journey was lengthened by some sixty 
miles. Now that the hour for which Con- 
niston had prepared him was so close at 
hand, he felt the need of this mighty, 
tongueless friend that had played such an 
intimate part in his life. It gave to him 
both courage and confidence, and in its 
company he could think more clearly. 
Nights he camped on its golden-yellow 
bars with the open stars over his head 
when he slept; his ears drank in the 
familiar sounds of long ago, for which he 
had yearned to the point of madness in his 


44 


THE RIVER’S END 45 

exile—the soft cries of the birds that 
hunted and mated in the glow of the moon, 
the friendly twit, twit, twit of the low- 
flying sand-pipers, the hoot of the owls, 
and the splash and sleepy voice of wild¬ 
fowl already on their way up from the 
south. Out of that south, where in places 
the plains swept the forest back almost to 
the river’s edge, he heard now and then the 
doglike barking of his little yellow friends 
of many an exciting horseback chase, the 
coyotes, and on the wilderness side, deep 
in the forest, the sinister howling of 
wolves. Fie was traveling, literally, the 
narrow pathway between two worlds. The 
river was that pathway. On the one hand, 
not so very far away, were the rolling 
prairies, green fields of grain, settlements 
and towns and the homes of men; on the 
other the wilderness lay to the water’s 
edge with its doors still open to him. The 
seventh day a new sound came to his ears 
at dawn. It was the whistle of a train at 
Prince Albert. 

There was no change in that whistle, 
and every nerve-string in his body re- • 
sponded to it with a crying thrill. It was 


THE RIVER’S END 


46 

the first voice to greet his home-coming, 
and the sound of it rolled the yesterdays 
back upon him in a deluge. He knew 
where he was now; he recalled exactly 
what he would find at the next turn in the 
river. A few minutes later he heard the 
wheezy chug, chug, chug of the old gold 
dredge at McCoffin’s Bend. It would be 
the Betty M., of course, with old Andy 
Duggan at the windlass, his black pipe in 
mouth, still scooping up the shifting sands 
as he had scooped them up for more than 
twenty years. He could see Andy sitting 
at his post, clouded in a halo of tobacco 
smoke, a red-bearded, shaggy-headed giant 
of a man whom the town affectionately 
called the River Pirate. All his life Andy 
had spent in digging gold out of the moun¬ 
tains or the river, and like grim death he 
had hung to the bars above and below 
McCoffin’s Bend. Keith smiled as he 
remembered old Andy’s passion for bacon. 
One could always find the perfume of 
bacon about the Betty M., and when 
Duggan went to town, there were those 
who swore they could smell it in his 
whiskers. 


THE RIVER’S END 


47 

Keith left the river trail now for the 
old logging road. In spite of his long 
fight to steel himself for what Conniston 
had called the “ psychological moment,” 
he felt himself in the grip of an uncom¬ 
fortable mental excitement. At last he was 
face to face with the great gamble. In a 
few hours he would play his one card. If 
he won, there was life ahead of him again, 
if he lost—death. The old question which 
he had struggled to down surged upon 
him. Was it worth the chance? Was it in 
an hour of madness that he and Conniston 
had pledged themselves to this amazing 
adventure? The forest was still with him. 
He could turn back. The game had not 
yet gone so far that he could not with¬ 
draw his hand—and for a space a power¬ 
ful impulse moved him. And then, com¬ 
ing suddenly to the edge of the clearing at 
McCoffin’s Bend, he saw the dredge close 
inshore, and striding up from the beach 
Andy Duggan himself! In another mo¬ 
ment Keith had stepped forth and was 
holding up a hand in greeting. 

He felt his heart thumping in an un¬ 
familiar way as Duggan came on. Was it 


48 THE RIVER’S END 

conceivable that the riverman would not 
recognize him? He forgot his beard, for¬ 
got the great change that four years had 
wrought in him. He remembered only 
that Duggan had been his friend, that a 
hundred times they had sat together in the 
quiet glow of long evenings, telling tales 
of the great river they both loved. And 
always Duggan’s stories had been of that 
mystic raradise hidden away in the west¬ 
ern mountains—the river’s end, the para¬ 
dise of golden lure, where the Saskatche¬ 
wan was born amid towering peaks, and 
where Duggan—a long time ago—had 
quested for the treasure which he knew 
was hidden somewhere there. Four years 
had not changed Duggan. If anything his 
beard was redder and thicker and his hair 
shaggier than when Keith had last seen 
him. And then, following him from the 
Betsy M., Keith caught the everlasting 
scent of bacon. He devoured it in deep 
breaths. His soul cried out for it. Once 
he had grown tired of Duggan’s bacon, but 
now he felt that he could go on eating it 
forever. As Duggan advanced, he was 
moved by a tremendous desire to stretch 


THE RIVER’S END 


49 

out his hand and say: “ Fm John Keith. 
Don’t you know me, Duggan? ” Instead, 
he choked back his desire and said, “ Fine 
morning! ” 

Duggan nodded uncertainly. He was 
evidently puzzled at not being able to 
place his man. “ It’s always fine on the 
river, rain ’r shine. Anybody who says it 
ain’t is a God A’mighty liar! ” 

He was still the old Duggan, ready to 
fight for his river at the drop of a hat! 
Keith wanted to hug him. He shifted his 
pack and said: 

“ I’ve slept with it for a week—just to 
have it for company—on the way down 
from Cumberland House. Seems good to 
get back!” He took off his hat and met 
the riverman’s eyes squarely. “ Do you 
happen to know if McDowell is at bar¬ 
racks? ” he asked. 

“ He is,” said Duggan. 

That was all. He was looking at Keith 
with a curious directness. Keith held his 
breath. He would have given a good deal 
to have seen behind Duggan’s beard. 
There was a hard note in the riverman’s 
voice, too. It puzzled him. And there 


THE RIVER’S END 


SO 

was a flash of sullen fire in his eyes at the 
mention of McDowell’s name. 

“ The Inspector’s there—sittin’ tight,” 
he added, and to Keith’s amazement 
brushed past him without another word 
and disappeared into the bush. 

This, at least, was not like the good- 
humored Duggan of four years ago. 
Keith replaced his hat and went on. At 
the farther side of the clearing he turned 
and looked back. Duggan stood in the 
open roadway, his hands thrust deep in 
his pockets, staring after him. Keith 
waved his hand, but Duggan did not re¬ 
spond. He stood like a sphinx, his big 
red beard glowing in the early sun, and 
watched Keith until he w^as gone. 

To Keith this first experiment in the 
matter of testing an identity was a dis¬ 
appointment. It was not only disappoint¬ 
ing but filled him with apprehension. It 
was true that Duggan had not recognized 
him as John Keith, but neither had he 
recognized him as Derwent Conniston! 
And Duggan was not a man to forget in 
three or four years—or half a lifetime, for 
that matter. He saw himself facing a new 


THE RIVER’S END 


51 

and unexpected situation. What if Mc¬ 
Dowell, like Duggan, saw in him nothing 
more than a stranger? The Englishman’s 
last words pounded in his head again like 
little fists beating home a truth, “ You win 
or lose the moment McDowell first sets his 
eyes on you.” They pressed upon him now 
with a deadly significance. For the first 
time he understood all that Conniston had 
meant. His danger was not alone in the 
possibility of being recognized as John 
Keith; it lay also in the hazard of not be¬ 
ing recognized as Derwent Conniston. 

If the thought had come to him to turn 
back, if the voice of fear and a premoni¬ 
tion of impending evil had urged him to 
seek freedom in another direction, their 
whispered cautions were futile in the thrill 
of the greater excitement that possessed 
him now. That there was a third hand 
playing in this game of chance in which 
Conniston had already lost his life, and in 
which he was now staking his own, was 
something which gave to Keith a new and 
entirely unlooked-for desire to see the end 
of the adventure. The mental vision of his 
own certain fate, should he lose, dissolved 


THE RIVER’S END 


52 

into a nebulous presence that no longer op¬ 
pressed nor appalled him. Physical in¬ 
stinct to fight against odds, the inspiration 
that presages the uncertainty of battle, fired 
his blood with an exhilarating eagerness. 
He was anxious to stand face to face with 
McDowell. Not until then would the real 
fight begin. For the first time the fact 
seized upon him that the Englishman was 
wrong—he would not win or lose in the 
first moment of the Inspector’s scrutiny. 
In that moment he could lose— 
McDowell’s cleverly trained eyes might 
detect the fraud; but to win, if the game 
was not lost at the first shot, meant an 
exciting struggle. Today might be his 
Armageddon, but it could not possess the 
hour of his final triumph. 

He felt himself now like a warrior held 
in leash within sound of the enemy’s guns 
and the smell of his powder. He held his 
old world to be his enemy, for civilization 
meant people, and the people were the law 
—and the law wanted his life. Never had 
he possessed a deeper hatred for the old 
code of an eye for an eye and a tooth for 
a tooth than in this hour when he saw up 


THE RIVER’S END ^ 

the valley a gray mist of smoke rising 
over the roofs of his home town. He 
had never conceded within himself that 
he was a criminal. Fie believed that in 
killing Kirkstone he had killed a serpent 
who had deserved to die, and a hundred 
times he had told himself that the job 
would have been much more satisfactory 
from the view-point of human sanitation 
if he had sent the son in the father’s foot¬ 
steps. He had rid the people of a man 
not fit to live—and the people wanted to 
kill him for it. Therefore the men and 
women in that town he had once loved, and 
still loved, were his enemies, and to find 
friends among them again he was com¬ 
pelled to perpetrate a clever fraud. 

He remembered an unboarded path 
from this side of the town, which entered 
an inconspicuous little street at the end of 
which was a barber shop. It was the 
barber shop which he must reach first. 
He was glad that it was early in the day 
when he came to the street an hour later, 
for he would meet few people. The street 
had changed considerably. Long, open 
spaces had filled in with houses, and he 


THE RIVER’S END 


54 

wondered if the anticipated boom of four 
years ago had come. He smiled grimly as 
the humor of the situation struck him. 
His father and he had staked their future 
in accumulating a lot of “ outside ” prop¬ 
erty. If the boom had materialized, that 
property was inside ” now—and worth a 
great deal. Before he reached the barber 
shop he realized that the dream of the 
Prince Albertites had come true. Pros¬ 
perity had advanced upon them in mighty 
leaps. The population of the place had 
trebled. He was a rich man! And also, 
it occurred to him, he was a dead one— 
or would be when he reported officially to 
McDowell. What a merry scrap there 
would be among the heirs of John Keith, 
deceased! 

The old shop still clung to its corner, 
which was valuable as “ business footage ” 
now. But it possessed a new barber. He 
was alone. Keith gave his instructions in 
definite detail and showed him Conniston’s 
photograph in his identification book. 
The beard and mustache must be just so, 
very smart, decidedly English, and of mili¬ 
tary neatness, his hair cut not too short 


THE RIVER’S END 


55 

and brushed smoothly back. When the 
operation was over, he congratulated the 
barber and himself. Bronzed to the color 
of an Indian by wind and smoke, straight 
as an arrow, his muscles swelling with the 
brute strength of the wilderness, he smiled 
at himself in the mirror when he compared 
the old John Keith with this new Derwent 
Conniston! Before he went out he tight¬ 
ened his belt a notch. Then he headed 
straight for the barracks of His Majesty’s 
Royal Northwest Mounted Police. 

His way took him up the main street, 
past the rows of shops that had been there 
four years ago, past the Saskatchewan 
Hotel and the little Board of Trade build¬ 
ing which, like the old barber shop, still 
hung to its original perch at the edge of 
the high bank which ran precipitously 
down to the river. And there, as sure as 
fate, was Percival Clary, the little English 
Secretary! But what a different Percy! 
He had broadened out and straightened 
up. He had grown a mustache, which was 
immaculately waxed. His trousers were 
immaculately creased, his shoes were shin¬ 
ing, and he stood before the door of his 


THE RIVER’S END 


56 

now important office resting lightly on a 
cane. Keith grinned as he witnessed how 
prosperity had bolstered up Percival along 
with the town. His eyes quested for 
familiar faces as he went along. Here 
and there he saw one, but for the most 
part he encountered strangers, lively look¬ 
ing men who were hustling as if they had 
a mission in hand. Glaring real estate 
signs greeted him from every place of 
prominence, and automobiles began to hum 
up and down the main street that stretched 
along the river—twenty where there had 
been one not so long ago. 

Keith found himself fighting to keep his 
eyes straight ahead when he met a girl 
or a woman. Never had he believed fully 
and utterly in the angelhood of the 
feminine until now. He passed perhaps a 
dozen on the way to barracks, and he was 
overwhelmed with the desire to stop and 
feast his eyes upon each one of them. 
He had never been a lover of women; he 
admired them, he believed them to be the 
better part of man, he had worshiped his 
mother, but his heart had been neither 
glorified nor broken by a passion for the 


THE RIVER’S END 


57 

opposite sex. Now, to the bottom of his 
soul, he worshiped that dozen! Some of 
them were homely, some of them were 
plain, two or three of them were pretty, 
but to Keith their present physical qualifi¬ 
cations made no difference. They were 
white women, and they were glorious, 
every one of them! The plainest of them 
was lovely. He wanted to throw up his 
hat and shout in sheer joy. Four years— 
and now he was back in angel land! For 
a space he forgot McDowell. 

His head was in a whirl when he came 
to barracks. Life was good, after all. It 
was worth fighting for, and he was bound 
to fight. He went straight to McDowell’s 
office. A moment after his knock on the 
door the Inspector’s secretary appeared. 

“ The Inspector is busy, sir,” he said in 
response to Keith’s inquiry. “ I’ll tell 
him-” 

“ That I am here on a very important 
matter,” advised Keith. ‘^He will admit 
me when you tell him that I bring infor¬ 
mation regarding a certain John Keith.” 

The secretary disappeared through an 
inner door. It seemed not more than ten 



58 THE RIVER’S END 

seconds before he was back. “ The In¬ 
spector will see you, sir.” 

Keith drew a deep breath to quiet the 
violent beating of his heart. In spite of 
all his courage he felt upon him the clutch 
of a cold and foreboding hand, a hand 
that seemed struggling to drag him back. 
And again he heard Conniston’s dying 
voice whispering to him, ^'Remember, old 
chap, you win or lose the moment 
McDowell first sets his eyes on you//' 

Was Conniston right? 

Win or lose, he would play the game as 
the Englishman would have played it. 
Squaring his shoulders he entered to face 
McDowell, the cleverest man-hunter in the 
Northwest. 


V 


K EITH’S first vision, as he entered the 
office of the Inspector of Police, was 
not of McDowell, but of a girl. She sat 
directly facing him as he advanced 
through the door, the light from a window 
throwing into strong relief her face and 
hair. The effect was unusual. She was 
strikingly handsome. The sun, giving to 
the room a soft radiance, lit up her hair 
with shimmering gold; her eyes, Keith 
saw, were a clear and wonderful gray— 
and they stared at him as he entered, w^hile 
the poise of her body and the tenseness of 
her face gave evidence of sudden and un¬ 
usual emotion. These things Keith ob¬ 
served in a flash; then he turned toward 
McDowell. 

The Inspector sat behind a table covered 
with maps and papers, and instantly Keith 
was conscious of the penetrating inquisi¬ 
tion of his gaze. He felt, for an instant, 

59 


THE RIVER’S END 


6o 

the disquieting tremor of the criminal. 
Then he met McDowell’s eyes squarely. 
They, were, as Conniston had warned him, 
eyes that could see through boiler-plate. 
Of an indefinable color and deep set be¬ 
hind shaggy, gray eyebrows, they pierced 
him through at the first glance. Keith 
took in the carefully waxed gray mus¬ 
taches, the close-cropped gray hair, the 
rigidly set muscles of the man’s face, and 
saluted. 

He felt creeping over him a slow chill. 
There was no greeting in that iron-like 
countenance, for full a quarter-minute no 
sign of recognition. And then, as the sun 
had played in the girl’s hair, a new emo¬ 
tion passed over McDowell’s face, and 
Keith saw for the first time the man whom 
Derwent Conniston had known as a friend 
as well as a superior. He rose from his 
chair, and leaning over the table said in a 
voice in which were mingled both amaze¬ 
ment and pleasure: 

^‘We were just talking about the devil 
—and here you are, sir! Conniston, how 
are you? ” 

For a few moments Keith did not see. 


THE RIVER’S END 


61 

He had won! The blood pounded through 
his heart so violently that it confused his 
vision and his senses. He felt the grip of 
McDowell’s hand; he heard his voice; a 
vision swam before his eyes—and it was 
the vision of Derwent Conniston’s trium¬ 
phant face. He was standing erect, his 
head was up, he was meeting McDowell 
shoulder to shoulder, even smiling, but in 
that swift surge of exultation he did not 
know. McDowell, still gripping his hand 
and with his other hand on his arm, was 
wheeling him about, and he found the girl 
on her feet, staring at him as if he had 
newly risen from the dead. 

McDowell’s military voice was snapping 
vibrantly, “ Conniston, meet Miss Miriam 
Kirkstone, daughter of Judge Kirkstone!” 

He bowed and held for a moment in his 
own the hand of the girl whose father he 
had killed. It was lifeless and cold. Her 
lips moved, merely speaking his name. 
His own were mute. McDowell was say¬ 
ing something about the glory of the serv¬ 
ice and the sovereignty of the law. And 
then, breaking in like the beat of a drum 
on the introduction, his voice demanded, 


62 THE RIVER’S END 

Conniston —did you get your man? 

The question brought Keith to his senses. 
He inclined his head slightly and said, “ I 
beg to report that John Keith is dead, 
sir.” 

He saw Miriam Kirkstone give a visible 
start, as if his words had carried a stab. 
She was apparently making a strong effort 
to hide her agitation as she turned swiftly 
away from him, speaking to McDowell. 

You have been very kind. Inspector 
McDowell. I hope very soon to have the 
pleasure of talking with Mr. Conniston— 
about—John Keith.” 

She left them, nodding slightly to Keith. 

When she was gone, a puzzled look 
filled the Inspector’s eyes. “ She has been 
like that for the last six months,” he ex¬ 
plained. “Tremendously interested in this 
man Keith and his fate. I don’t believe 
that I have watched for your return more 
anxiously than she has, Conniston. And 
the curious part of it is she seemed to 
have no interest in the matter at all until 
six months ago. Sometimes I am afraid 
that brooding over her father’s death has 
unsettled her a little. A mighty pretty 


THE RIVER’S END 63 

girl, Conniston. A mighty pretty girl, 
indeed! And her brother is a skunk. 
Pst! You haven’t forgotten him?” 

He drew a chair up close to his own and 
motioned Keith to be seated. “ You’re 
changed, Conniston!” 

The words came out of him like a shot. 
So unexpected were they that Keith felt 
the effect of them in every nerve of his 
body. He sensed instantly what McDowell 
meant. He was not like the Englishman; 
he lacked his mannerisms, his cool and 
superior suavity, the inimitable quality of 
his nerve and sportsmanship. Even as he 
met the disquieting directness of the In¬ 
spector’s eyes, he could see Conniston sit¬ 
ting in his place, rolling his mustache be¬ 
tween his forefinger and thumb, and smil¬ 
ing as though he had gone into the north 
but yesterday and. had returned today. 
That was what McDowell was missing in 
him, the soul of Conniston himself—Con¬ 
niston, the ne plus ultra of presence and 
amiable condescension, the man who could 
look the Inspector or the High Commis¬ 
sioner himself between the eyes, and, 
serenely indifferent to Service regulations, 


THE RIVER’S END 


64 

say, “ Fine morning, old top! ” Keith was 
not without his own sense of humor. How 
the Englishman’s ghost must be raging 
if it was in the room at the present 
moment! He grinned and shrugged his 
shoulders. 

“ Were you ever up there—through the 
Long Night—alone?” he asked. “Ever 
been through six months of living torture 
with the stars leering at you and the foxes 
barking at you all the time, fighting to 
keep yourself from going mad? I went 
through that twice to get John Keith, and 
I guess you’re right. I’m changed. I don’t 
think I’ll ever be the same again. Some¬ 
thing—has gone. I can’t tell what it is, 
but I feel it. I guess only half of me 
pulled through. It killed John Keith. 
Rotten, isn’t it? ” 

He felt that he had made a lucky stroke. 
McDowell pulled out a drawer from 
under the table and thrust a box of fat 
cigars under his nose. 

“ Light up, Derry—light up and tell us 
what happened. Bless my soul, you’re not 
half dead! A week in the old town will 
straighten you out.” 


THE RIVER’S END 

He struck a match and held it to the 
tip of Keith’s cigar. 

For an hour thereafter Keith told the 
story of the man-hunt. It was his Iliad. 
He could feel the presence of Conniston 
as words fell from his lips; he forgot the 
presence of the stern-faced man who was 
watching him and listening to him; he 
could see once more only the long months 
and years of that epic drama of one against 
one, of pursuit and flight, of hunger and 
cold, of the Long Nights filled with the 
desolation of madness and despair. He 
triumphed over himself, and it was Con¬ 
niston who spoke from within him. It 
was the Englishman who told how terribly 
John Keith had been punished, and when 
he came to the final days in the lonely little 
cabin in the edge of the Barrens, Keith 
finished with a choking in his throat, and 
the words, 

“And that was how John Keith died— 
a gentleman and a man/ 

He was thinking of the Englishman, of 
the calm and fearless smile in his eyes as 
he died, of his last words, the last friendly 
grip of his hand, and McDowell saw the 


66 THE RIVER’S END 

thing as though he had faced it himself. 
He brushed a hand over his face as if to 
wipe away a film. For some moments 
after Keith had finished, he stood with his 
back to the man who he thought was Con- 
niston, and his mind was swiftly adding 
twos and twos and fours and fours as he 
looked away into the green valley of the 
Saskatchewan. He was the iron man when 
he turned to Keith again, the law itself, 
merciless and potent, by some miracle 
turned into the form of human flesh. 

After two and a half years of that 
even a murderer must have seemed like a 
saint to you, Conniston. You have done 
your work splendidly. The whole story 
shall go to the Department, and if it 
doesn’t bring you a commission. I’ll 
resign. But we must continue to re¬ 
gret that John Keith did not live to be 
hanged.” 

“ He has paid the price,” said Keith 
dully. 

“No, he has not paid the price, not in 
full. He merely died. It could have been 
paid only at the end of a rope. His crime 
was atrociously brutal, the culmination of 


THE RIVER’S END 67 

a fiend’s desire for revenge. We will wipe 
off his name. But I can not wipe away 
the regret. I would sacrifice a year of my 
life if he were in this room with you now. 
It would be worth it. God, what a 

thing for the Service—to have brought 

John Keith back to justice after four 
years! ” 

He was rubbing his hands and smiling at 
Keith even as he spoke. His eyes had 

taken on a filmy glitter. The law! It 

stood there, without heart or soul, coveting 
the life that had escaped it. A feeling of 
revulsion swept over Keith. 

A knock came at the door. 

McDowell’s voice gave permission, and 
the door slowly opened. Cruze, the young 
secretary, thrust in his head. 

“ Shan Tung is waiting, sir,” he said. 

An invisible hand reached up suddenly 
and gripped at Keith’s throat. He turned 
aside to conceal what his face might have 
betrayed. Shan Tung! He knew what it 
was now that had pulled him back, he 
knew why Conniston’s troubled face had 
traveled with him over the Barrens, and 
there surged over him with a sickening 


68 


THE RIVER’S END 


foreboding, a realization of what it was 
that Conniston had remembered and 
wanted to tell him—^when it was too late. 
They had forgotten Shan Tung, the China¬ 
man! 


? A 

< \ 


VI 


I N the hall beyond the secretary's room 
Shan Tung waited. As McDowell was 
the iron and steel embodiment of the law, 
so Shan Tung was the flesh and blood 
spirit of the mysticism and immutability 
of his race. His face was the face of an 
image made of an unemotional living tissue 
in place of wood or stone, dispassionate, 
tolerant, patient. What passed in the brain 
behind his yellow-tinged eyes only Shan 
Tung knew. It was his secret. And 
McDowell had ceased to analyze or at¬ 
tempt to understand him. The law, baf¬ 
fled in its curiosity, had come to accept 
him as a weird and wonderful mechanism 
—a thing more than a man—possessed 
of an unholy power. This power was the 
oriental’s marvelous ability to remember 
faces. Once Shan Tung looked at a face, 
it was photographed in his memory for 
years. Time and change could not make 
him forget—and the law made use of him. 

69 


70 


THE RIVER’S END 


Briefly McDowell had classified him 
at Headquarters. “ Either an exiled prime 
minister of China or the devil in a yellow 
skin,” he had written to the Commissioner. 
“ Correct age unknown and past history a 
mystery. Dropped into Prince Albert in 
1908 wearing diamonds and patent leather 
shoes. A stranger then and a stranger now. 
Proprietor and owner of the Shan Tung 
Cafe. Educated, soft-spoken, womanish, 
but the one man on earth I’d hate to be 
in a dark room with, knives drawn. I 
use him, mistrust him, watch him, and 
would fear him under certain conditions. 
As far as we can discover, he is harmless 
and law-abiding. But such a ferret must 
surely have played his game somewhere, at 
some time.” 

This was the man whom Conniston had 
forgotten and Keith now dreaded to meet. 
For many minutes Shan Tung had stood at 
a window looking out upon the sunlit drill- 
ground and the broad sweep of green be¬ 
yond. He was toying with his slim hands 
caressingly. Half a smile was on his lips. 
No man had ever seen more than that 
half smile illuminate Shan Tung’s face. 


THE RIVER’S END 71 

His black hair was sleek and carefully 
trimmed. His dress was immaculate. His 
slimness, as McDowell had noted, was the 
slimness of a young girl. 

When Cruze came to announce that 
McDowell would see him, Shan Tung was 
still visioning the golden-headed figure of 
Miriam Kirkstone as he had seen her pass¬ 
ing through the sunshine. There was 
something like a purr in his breath as he 
stood interlacing his tapering fingers. The 
instant he heard the secretary’s footsteps 
the finger play stopped, the purr died, the 
half smile was gone. He turned softly. 
Cruze did not speak. He simply made 
a movement of his head, and Shan Tung’s 
feet fell noiselessly. Only the slight sound 
made by the opening and closing of a door 
gave evidence of his entrance into the In¬ 
spector’s room. Shan Tung and no other 
could open and close a door like that. 
Cruze shivered. He always shivered when 
Shan Tung passed him, and always he 
swore that he could smell something in 
the air, like a poison left behind. 

Keith, facing the window, was waiting. 
The moment the door was opened, he felt 


THE RIVER’S END 


72 

Shan Tung’s presence. Every nerve in his 
body was keyed to an uncomfortable ten¬ 
sion. The thought that his grip on him¬ 
self was weakening, and because of a 
Chinaman, maddened him. And he must 
turn. Not to face Shan Tung now would 
be but a postponement of the ordeal and 
a confession of cowardice. 

Forcing his hand into Conniston’s little 
trick of twisting a mustache, he turned 
slowly, leveling his eyes squarely to meet 
Shan Tung’s. 

To his surprise Shan Tung seemed ut¬ 
terly oblivious of his presence. He had 
not, apparently, taken more than a casual 
glance in his direction. In a voice which 
one beyond the door might have mis¬ 
taken for a woman’s, he was saying to 
McDowell: 

“ I have seen the man you sent me to 
see, Mr. McDowell. It is Larsen. He has 
changed much in eight years. He has 
grown a beard. He has lost an eye. His 
hair has whitened. But it is Larsen.” 

The faultlessness of his speech and the 
unemotional but perfect inflection of his 
words made Keith, like the young secre- 


THE RIVER’S END 


73 

tary, shiver where he stood. In McDow¬ 
ell’s face he saw a flash of exultation. 

“ Fie had no suspicion of you, Shan 
Tung? ” 

He did not see me to suspect. He will 

be there—when-” Slowly he faced 

Keith. —^When Mr. Conniston goes to 

arrest him,” he finished. 

He inclined his head as he backed noise** 
lessly toward the door. His yellow eyes 
did not leave Keith’s face. In them Keith 
fancied that he caught a sinister gleam. 
There was the faintest inflection of a new 
note in his voice, and his fingers were play¬ 
ing again, but not as when he had looked 
out through the window at Miriam Kirk- 
stone. And then—in a flash, it seemed to 
Keith—the Chinaman’s eyes closed to nar¬ 
row slits, and the pupils became points of 
flame no larger than the sharpened ends of 
a pair of pencils. The last that Keith was 
conscious of seeing of Shan Tung was the 
oriental’s eyes. They had seemed to drag 
his soul half out of his body. 

“ A queer devil,” said McDowell. 
“After he is gone, I always feel as if a 
snake had been in the room. He still hates 



THE RIVER’S END 


74 

you, Conniston. Three years have made no 
difference. He hates you like poison. I 
believe he would kill you, if he had a 
chance to do it and get away with the 
business. And you—you blooming idiot— 
simply twiddie your mustache and laugh 
at him! I’d feel differently if I were in 
your boots.” 

Inwardly Keith was asking himself why 
it was that Shan Tung had hated Con¬ 
niston. 

McDowell added nothing to enlighten 
him. He was gathering up a number of 
papers scattered on his desk, smiling with 
a grim satisfaction. “ It’s Larsen all right 
if Shan Tung says so,” he told Keith. 
And then, as if he had only thought of the 
matter, he said, “You’re going to reenlist, 
aren’t you, Conniston? ” 

“ I still owe the Service a month or so 
before my term expires, don’t I? After 
that—yes—I believe I shall reenlist.” 

“Good!” approved the Inspector. 
“ I’ll have you a sergeancy within a month. 
Meanwhile you’re off duty and may do 
anything you please. You know Brady, 
the Company agent? He’s up the Macken- 


THE RIVER’S END 


75 

zie on a trip, and here’s the key to his 
shack. I know you’ll appreciate getting 
under a real roof again, and Brady won’t 
object as long as I collect his thirty dollars 
a month rent. Of course Barracks is open 
to you, but it just occurred to me you 
might prefer this place while on furlough. 
Everything is there from a bathtub to nut¬ 
crackers, and I know a little Jap in town 
who is hunting a job as a cook. What do 
you say? ” 

Splendid!” cried Keith. I’ll go up 
at once, and if you’ll hustle the Jap along, 
I’ll appreciate it. You might tell him to 
bring up stuff for dinner,” he added. 

McDowell gave him a key. Ten min¬ 
utes later he was out of sight of barracks 
and climbing a green slope that led to 
Brady’s bungalow. 

In spite of the fact that he had not 
played his part brilliantly, he believed that 
he had scored a triumph. Andy Duggan 
had not recognized him, and the riverman 
had been one of his most intimate friends. 
McDowell had accepted him apparently 
without a suspicion. And Shan Tung— 

It was Shan Tung who weighed heavily 


76 THE RIVER’S END 

upon his mind, even as his nerves tingled 
with the thrill of success. He could not 
get away from the vision of the Chinaman 
as he had backed through the Inspector’s 
door, the flaming needle-points of his eyes 
piercing him as he went. It was not 
hatred he had seen in Shan Tung’s face. 
He was sure of that. It was no emotion 
that he could describe. It was as if a pair 
of mechanical eyes fixed in the head of 
an amazingly efficient mechanical monster 
had focused themselves on him in those 
few instants. It made him think of an 
X-ray machine. But Shan Tung was 
human. And he was clever. Given an¬ 
other skin, one would not have taken him 
for what he was. The immaculateness of 
his speech and manners was more than un¬ 
usual; it was positively irritating, some¬ 
thing which no Chinaman should right¬ 
fully possess. So argued Keith as he went 
up to Brady’s bungalow. 

He tried to throw of! the oppression of 
the thing that was creeping over him, the 
growing suspicion that he had not passed 
safely under the battery of Shan Tung’s 
eyes. With physical things he endeavored 


THE RIVER’S END 77 

to thrust his mental uneasiness into the 
background. He lighted one of the half- 
dozen cigars McDowell had dropped into 
his pocket. It was good to feel a cigar 
between his teeth again and taste its flavor. 
At the crest of the slope on which Brady’s 
bungalow stood, he stopped and looked 
about him. Instinctively his eyes turned 
first to the west. In that direction half of 
the town lay under him, and beyond its 
edge swept the timbered slopes, the river, 
and the green pathways of the plains. 
His heart beat a little faster as he looked. 
Half a mile away was a tiny, parklike 
patch of timber, and sheltered there, with 
the river running under it, was the old 
home. The building was hidden, but 
through a break in the trees he could see 
the top of the old red brick chimney 
glowing in the sun, as if beckoning a wel¬ 
come to him over the tree tops. He for¬ 
got Shan Tung; he forgot McDowell; he 
forgot that he was John Keith, the mur¬ 
derer, in the overwhelming sea of loneli¬ 
ness that swept over him. He looked out 
into the world that had once been his. 
and all that he saw was that red brick 


78 THE RIVER’S END 

chimney glowing in the sun, and the chim¬ 
ney changed until at last it seemed to him 
like a tombstone rising over the graves of 
the dead. He turned to the door of the 
bungalow with a thickening in his throat 
and his eyes filmed by a mist through 
which for a few moments it was difficult 
for him to see. 

The bungalow was darkened by drawn 
curtains when he entered. One after an¬ 
other he let them up, and the sun poured 
in. Brady had left his place in order, and 
Keith felt about him an atmosphere of 
cheer that was a mighty urge to his flag¬ 
ging spirits. Brady was a home man with¬ 
out a wife. The Company’s agent had 
called his place “ The Shack ” because it 
was built entirely of logs, and a woman 
could not have made it more comfortable. 
Keith stood in the big living-room. At 
one end was a strong fireplace in which 
1 kindlings and birch were already laid, 
waiting the touch of a match. Brady’s 
reading table and his easy chair were 
drawn up close; his lounging moccasins 
were on a footstool; pipes, tobacco, books 
and magazines littered the table; and out 


THE RIVER’S END 79 

of this cheering disorder rose triumphantly 
the amber shoulder of a half-filled bottle 
of Old Rye. 

Keith found himself chuckling. His 
grin met the lifeless stare of a pair of 
glass eyes in the huge head of an old bull 
moose over the mantel, and after that his 
gaze rambled over the walls ornamented 
with mounted heads, pictures, snowshoes, 
gun-racks and the things which went to 
make up the comradeship and business of 
Brady’s picturesque life. Keith could look 
through into the little dining-room, and 
beyond that was the kitchen. He made an 
inventory of both and found that Mc¬ 
Dowell was right. There were nutcrackers 
in Brady’s establishment. And he found 
the bathroom. It was not much larger 
than a piano box, but the tub was man’s 
size, and Keith raised a window and poked 
his head out to find that it was connected 
with a rainwater tank built by a genius, 
just high enough to give weight sufficient 
for a water system and low enough to 
gather the rain as it fell from the eaves. 
He laughed outright, the sort of laugh 
that comes out of a man’s soul not when 


8 o 


THE RIVER’S END 


he is amused but when he is pleased. By 
the time he had investigated the two bed¬ 
rooms, he felt a real affection for Brady. 
He selected the agent’s room for his own. 
Here, too, were pipes and tobacco and 
books and magazines, and a reading lamp 
on a table close to the bedside. Not until 
he had made a closer inspection of the 
living-room did he discover that the Shack 
also had a telephone. 

By that time he noted that the sun had 
gone out. Driving up from the west was 
a mass of storm clouds. He unlocked a 
door from which he could look up the 
river, and the wind that was riding softly 
in advance of the storm ruffled his hair 
and cooled his face. In it he caught again 
the old fancy—the smells of the vast 
reaches of unpeopled prairie beyond the 
rim of the forest, and the luring chill of 
the distant mountain tops. Always storm 
that came down with the river brought to 
him voice from the river’s end. It came 
to him from the great mountains that were 
a passion with him; it seemed to thunder 
to him the old stories of the mightiest fast¬ 
nesses of the Rockies and stirred in him 


8 i 


THE RIVER’S END 

the child-bred yearning to follow up his 
beloved river until he came at last to the 
mystery of its birthplace in the cradle of 
the western ranges. And now, as he faced 
the storm, the grip of that desire held him 
like a strong hand. 

The sky blackened swiftly, and with the 
rumbling of far-away thunder he saw the 
lightning slitting the dark heaven like bay¬ 
onets, and the fire of the electrical charges 
galloped to him and filled his veins. His 
heart all at once cried out words that his 
lips did not utter. Why should he not 
answer the call that had come to him 
through all the years? Now was the 
time—and why should he not go? Why 
tempt fate in the hazard of a great ad¬ 
venture where home and friends and even 
hope were dead to him, when off there 
beyond the storm was the place of his 
dreams? He threw out his arms. His 
voice broke at last in a cry of strange 
ecstasy. Not everything was gone! Not 
everything was dead! Over the graveyard 
of his past there was sweeping a mighty 
force that called him, something that was 
no longer merely an urge and a demand 


82 THE RIVER’S END 

but a thing that was irresistible. He 
would go! Tomorrow—today—tonight —j 
he would begin making plans! 

He watched the deluge as it came on 
with a roar of wind, a beating, hissing wall 
under which the tree tops down in the 
edge of the plain bent their heads like a 
multitude of people in prayer. He saw it 
sweeping up the slope in a mass of gray 
dragoons. It caught him before he had 
closed the door, and his face dripped with 
wet as he forced the last inch of it against 
the wind with his shoulder. It was the 
sort of storm Keith liked. The thunder 
was the rumble of a million giant cart¬ 
wheels rolling overhead. 

Inside the bungalow it was growing 
dark as though evening had come. He 
dropped on his knees before the pile of 
dry fuel in the fireplace and struck a 
match. For a space the blaze smoldered; 
then the birch fired up like oil-soaked 
tinder, and a yellow flame crackled and 
roared up the flue. Keith was sensitive in 
the matter of smoking other people’s pipes, 
so he drew out his own and filled it with 
Brady’s tobacco. It was an English mix- 


THE RIVER’S END 83 

ture, rich and aromatic, and as the fire 
burned brighter and the scent of the 
tobacco filled the room, he dropped into 
Brady’s big lounging chair and stretched 
out his legs with a deep breath of satis¬ 
faction. His thoughts wandered to the 
clash of the storm. He would have a place 
like this off there in the mystery of the 
trackless mountains, where the Saskatche¬ 
wan was born. He would build it like 
Brady’s place, even to the rain-water tank 
midway between the roof and the ground. 
And after a few years no one would re¬ 
member that a man named John Keith 
had ever lived. 

Something brought him suddenly to 
his feet. It was the ringing of the tele¬ 
phone. After four years the sound was one 
that roused with an uncomfortable jump 
every nerve in his body. Probably it was 
McDowell calling up about the Jap or to 
ask how he liked the place. Probably— 
it was that. He repeated the thought 
aloud as he laid his pipe on the table. 
And yet as his hand came in contact with 
the telephone, he felt an inclination to 
draw back. A subtle voice whispered him 


84 THE RIVER’S END 

not to answer, to leave while the storm was 
dark, to go back into the wilderness, to 
fight his way to the western mountains. 

With a jerk he unhooked the receiver 
and put it to his ear. 

It was not McDowell who answered 
him. It was not Shan Tung. To his 
amazement, coming to him through the 
tumult of the storm, he recognized the 
voice of Miriam Kirkstone! 


VII 


W HY should Miriam Kirkstone call 
him up in an hour when the sky 
was livid with the flash of lightning and 
the earth trembled with the roll of thun¬ 
der? This was the question that filled 
Keith’s mind as he listened to the voice 
at the other end of the wire. It was 
pitched to a high treble as if uncon¬ 
sciously the speaker feared that the storm 
might break in upon her words. She 
was telling him that she had telephoned 
McDowell but had been too late to catch 
him before he left for Brady’s bungalow; 
she was asking him to pardon her for in¬ 
truding upon his time so soon after his 
return, but she was sure that he would 
understand her. She wanted him to come 
ap to see her that evening at eight o’clock. 
It was important—to her. Would he 
come? 

Before Keith had taken a moment to 
consult with himself he had replied that 
85 


86 


THE RIVER’S END 


he would. He heard her thank you,” 
her “ good-by,” and hung up the receiver, 
stunned. So far as he could remember, 
he had spoken no more than seven words. 
The beautiful young woman up at the 
Kirkstone mansion had clearly betrayed 
her fear of the lightning by winding up 
her business with him at the earliest pos¬ 
sible moment. Why, then, had she not 
waited until the storm was over? 

A pounding at the door interrupted his 
thought. He went to it and admitted an 
individual who, in spite of his water- 
soaked condition, was smiling all over. 
It was Wallie, the Jap. He was no larger 
than a boy of sixteen, and from eyes, ears, 
nose, and hair he was dripping streams, 
while his coat bulged with packages which 
he had struggled to protect from the tor¬ 
rent through which he had forced his way 
up the hill. Keith liked him on the in¬ 
stant. He found himself powerless to 
resist the infection of Wallie’s grin, and as 
Wallie hustled into the kitchen like a wet 
spaniel, he followed and helped him un¬ 
load. By the time the little Jap had dis¬ 
gorged his last package, he had assured 


THE RIVER’S END 87 

Keith that the rain was nice, that his name 
was Wallie, that he expected five dollars 
a week and could cook “ like heaven.” 
Keith laughed outright, and Wallie was so 
delighted with the general outlook that 
he fairly kicked his heels together. There¬ 
after for an hour or so he was left alone 
in possession of the kitchen, and shortly 
Keith began to hear certain sounds and 
catch occasional odoriferous whiffs which 
assured him that Wallie was losing no time 
in demonstrating his divine efficiency in 
the matter of cooking. 

Wallie’s coming gave him an excuse to 
call up McDowell. He confessed to a dis¬ 
quieting desire to hear the inspector’s voice 
again. In the back of his head was the 
fear of Shan Tung, and the hope that 
McDowell might throw some light on 
Miriam Kirkstone’s unusual request to 
see her that night. The storm had settled 
down into a steady drizzle Vv^hen he got in 
touch with him, and he was relieved to find 
there was no change in the friendliness of 
the voice that came over the telephone. If 
Shan Tung had a suspicion, he had kept 
it to himself. 


88 


THE RIVER’S END 


To Keith’s surprise it was McDowell 
who spoke first of Miss Kirkstone. 

“ She seemed unusually anxious to get 
in touch with you,” he said. “ I am 
frankly disturbed over a certain matter, 
Conniston, and I should like to talk with 
you before you go up tonight.” 

Keith sniffed the air. “ Wallie is going 
to ring the dinner bell within half an hour. 
Why not slip on a raincoat and join me up 
here? I think it’s going to be pretty 
good.” 

I’ll come,” said McDowell. Expect 
me any moment.” 

Fifteen minutes later Keith was helping 
him off with his wet slicker. He had ex¬ 
pected McDowell to make some observa¬ 
tion on the cheerfulness of the birch fire 
and the agreeable aromas that were leak¬ 
ing from Wallie’s kitchen, but the in¬ 
spector disappointed him. He stood for a 
few moments with his back to the fire, 
thumbing down the tobacco in his pipe, 
and he made no effort to conceal the fact 
that there was something in his mind more 
important than dinner and the cheer of a 
grate. 


THE RIVER’S END 89 

His eyes fell on the telephone, and he 
nodded toward it. “ Seemed very anxious 
to see you, didn’t she, Conniston? I mean 
Miss Kirkstone.” 

“ Rather.” 

McDowell seated himself and lighted a 
match. Seemed—a little—nervous—per¬ 
haps,” he suggested between puffs. ‘‘ As 
though something had happened—ar was 
going to happen. Don’t mind my ques¬ 
tioning you, do you, Derry? ” 

“Not a bit,"” said Keith. “You see, I 
thought perhaps you might explain-” 

There was a disquieting gleam in 
McDowell’s eyes. “ It was odd that she 
should call you up so soon—and in the 
storm—wasn’t it? She expected to find 
you at my office. I could fairly hear the 
lightning hissing along the wires. She 
must have been under some unusual im¬ 
pulse.” 

“ Perhaps.” 

McDowell was silent for a space, look¬ 
ing steadily at Keith, as if measuring him 
up to something. 

“ I don’t mind telling you that I am very 
deeply interested in Miss Kirkstone,” he 


90 THE RIVER’S END 

said. You didn’t see her when the Judge 
was killed. She was away at school, and 
you were on John Keith’s trail when she 
returned. I have never been much of a 
woman’s man, Conniston, but I tell you 
frankly that up until six or eight months 
ago Miriam was one of the most beautiful 
girls I have ever seen. I would give a good 
deal to know the exact hour and date 
when the change in her began. I might 
be able to trace some event to that date. 
It was six months ago thaf she began to 
take an interest in the fate of John Keith. 
Since then the change in her has alarmed 
me, Conniston. I don’t understand. She 
has betrayed nothing. But I have seen 
her dying by inches under my eyes. She 
is only a pale and drooping flower com¬ 
pared with what she was. I am positive 
it is not a sickness—unless it is mental. I 
have a suspicion. It is almost too terrible 
to put into words. You will be going up 
there tonight—you will be alone with her, 
will talk with her, may learn a great deal 
if you understand what it is that is eating 
like a canker in my mind. Will you help 
me to discover her secret? ” 


THE RIVER’S END 


91 

He leaned toward Keith. He was no 
longer the man of iron. There was some¬ 
thing intensely human in his face. 

“ There is no other man on earth I 
would confide this matter to,” he went on 
slowly. “ It will take—a gentleman—to 
handle it, someone who is big enough to 
forget if my suspicion is untrue, and who 
will understand fully what sacrilege means 
should it prove true. It is extremely deli¬ 
cate. I hesitate. And yet—I am waiting, 
Conniston. Is it necessary to ask you to 
pledge secrecy in the matter? ” 

Keith held out a hand. McDowell 
gripped it tight. 

It is—Shan Tung,” he said, a peculiar 
hiss in his voice. “ Shan Tung—and 
Miriam Kirkstone! Do you understand, 
Conniston? Does the horror of it get hold 
of you? Can 3^ou make yourself believe 
that it is possible? Am I mad to allow 
such a suspicion to creep into my brain? 
Shan Tung—Miriam Kirkstone! And she 
sees herself standing now at the very edge 
of the pit of hell, and it is killing 
her.” 

Keith felt his blood running cold as he 


THE RIVER’S END 


92 

saw in the inspector’s face the thing which 
he did not put more plainly in words. He 
was shocked. He drew his hand from 
McDowell’s grip almost fiercely. 

Impossible! ” he cried. Yes, you are 
mad. Such a thing would be inconceiv¬ 
able!” 

And yet I have told myself that it is 
possible,” said McDowell. His face was 
returning into its iron-like mask. His two 
hands gripped the arms of his chair, and 
he stared at Keith again as if he were 
looking through him at something else, 
and to that something else he seemed to 
speak, slowly, weighing and measuring 
each word before it passed his lips. 

“ I am not superstitious. It has always 
been a law with me to have conviction 
forced upon me. I do not believe unusual 
things until investigation proves them. I 
am making an exception in the case of 
Shan Tung. I have never regarded him 
as a man, like you and me, but as a sort 
of superphysical human machine possessed 
of a certain psychological power that is 
at times almost deadly. Do you begin to 
understand me? I believe that he has 


THE RIVER’S END 


93 

exerted the whole force of that influence 
upon Miriam Kirkstone—and she has sur¬ 
rendered to it. I believe—and yet I am 
not positive.” 

And you have watched them for six 
months? ” 

“No. The suspicion came less than a 
month ago. No one that I know has ever 
had the opportunity of looking into Shan 
Tung’s private life. The quarters behind 
his cafe are a mystery. I suppose they can 
be entered from the cafe and also from a 
little stairway at the rear. One night— 
very late—I saw Miriam Kirkstone come 
down that stairway. Twice in the last 
month she has visited Shan Tung at a 
late hour. Twice that I know of, you 
understand. And that is not all-—quite.” 

Keith saw the distended veins in Mc¬ 
Dowell’s clenched hands, and he knew that 
/ he was speaking under a tremendous strain. 

“ I watched the Kirkstone home—per¬ 
sonally. Three times in that same month 
Shan Tung visited her there. The third 
time I entered boldly with a fraud mes¬ 
sage for the girl. I remained with her for 
an hour. In that time I saw nothing and 


THE RIVER’S END 


94 

h^ard nothing of Shan Tung. He was 
hiding—or got out as I came in.” 

Keith was visioning Miriam Kirkstone 
as he had seen her in the inspector’s office. 
He recalled vividly the slim, golden beauty 
of her, the wonderful gray of her eyes, and 
the shimmer of her hair as she stood in the 
light of the window—and then he saw 
Shan Tung, effeminate, with his sly, creep¬ 
ing hands and his narrowed eyes, and the 
thing which McDowell had suggested rose 
up before him a monstrous impossibility. 

Why don’t you demand an explanation 
of Miss Kirkstone?” he asked. 

“ I have, and she denies it all absolutely, 
except that Shan Tung came to her house 
once to see her brother. She says that she 
was never on the little stairway back of 
Shan Tung’s place.” 

“And you do not believe her?” 

“ Assuredly not. I saw her. To speak 
the cold truth, Conniston, she is lying mag¬ 
nificently to cover up something which she 
does not want any other person on earth 
to know.” 

Keith leaned forward suddenly. “ And 
why is it that John Keith, dead and buried, 


THE RIVER’S END 


95 

should have anything to do w'ith this? ” he 
demanded. “ Why did this ‘ intense inter¬ 
est ’ you speak of in John Keith begin at 
about the same time your suspicions began 
to include Shan Tung? ” 

McDowell shook his head. “ It may be 
that her interest was not so much in John 
Keith as in you, Conniston. That is for 
you to discover—tonight. It is an inter¬ 
esting situation. It has tragic possibilities. 
The instant you substantiate my suspicions 
we’ll deal directly with Shan Tung. Just 
now—there’s Wallie behind you grinning 
like a Cheshire cat. His dinner must be a 
success.” 

The diminutive Jap had noiselessly 
opened the door of the little dining-room 
in which the table was set for two. 

Keith smiled as he sat down opposite the 
man who would have sent him to the 
executioner had he known the truth. 
After all, it was but a step from comedy 
to tragedy. And just now he was con¬ 
scious of a bit of grisly humor in the 
situation. 


VIII 


HE storm had settled into a steady 



J. drizzle when McDowell left the 
Shack at two o’clock. Keith watched the 
iron man, as his tall, gray figure faded 
away into the mist down the slope, with a 
curious undercurrent of emotion. Before 
the inspector had come up as his guest he 
had, he thought, definitely decided his 
future action. He would go west on his 
furlough, write McDowell that he had de¬ 
cided not to reenlist, and bury himself in 
the British Columbia mountains before an 
answer could get back to him, leaving the 
impression that he was going on to Aus¬ 
tralia or Japan. He was not so sure of 
himself now. He found himself looking 
ahead to the night, when he would see 
Miriam Kirkstone, and he no longer feared 
Shan Tung as he had feared him a few 
hours before. McDowell himself had 
given him new weapons. He was unof¬ 
ficially on Shan Tung’s trail. McDowell 


THE RIVER’S END 97 

had frankly placed the affair of Miriam 
Kirkstone in his hands. That it all had 
in some mysterious way something to do 
with himself—^John Keith—urged him on 
to the adventure. 

He waited impatiently for the evening. 
Wallie, smothered in a great raincoat, he 
sent forth on a general foraging expedition 
and to bring up some of Conniston’s 
clothes. It was a quarter of eight when he 
left for Miriam Kirkstone’s home. 

Even at that early hour the night lay 
about him heavy and dark and saturated 
with a heavy mist. From the summit of 
the hill he could no longer make out the 
valley of the Saskatchewan. He walked 
down into a pit in which the scattered 
lights of the town burned dully like distant 
stars. It was a little after eight when he 
came to the Kirkstone house. It was set 
well back in an iron-fenced area thick with 
trees and shrubbery, and he saw that the 
porch light was burning to show him the 
way. Curtains were drawn, but a glow of 
warm light lay behind them. 

He was sure that Miriam Kirkstone 
must have heard the crunch of his feet on 


98 THE RIVER’S END 

the gravel walk, for he had scarcely 
touched the old-fashioned knocker on the 
door when the door itself was opened. It 
was Miriam who greeted him. Again he 
held her hand for a moment in his own. 

It was not cold, as it had been in 
McDowell's office. It was almost fever¬ 
ishly hot, and the pupils of the girl’s eyes 
were big, and dark, and filled with a 
luminous fire. Keith might have thought 
that coming in out of the dark night he 
had startled her. But it was not that 
She was repressing something that had 
preceded him. He thought that he heard 
the almost noiseless closing of a door at 
the end of the long hall, and his nostrils 
caught the faint aroma of a strange per¬ 
fume. Between him and the light hung a 
filmy veil of smoke. He knew that it had 
come from a cigarette. There was an un¬ 
easy note in Miss Kirkstone’s voice as she 
invited him to hang his coat and hat on an 
old-fashioned rack near the door. He took 
his time, trying to recall where he had 
detected that perfume before. He remem¬ 
bered, with a sort of shock. It was after 
Shan Tung had left McDowell’s office. 


THE RIVER’S END 


99 

She was smiling when he turned, and 
apologizing again for making her unusual 
request that day. 

“ It was—quite unconventional. But 
I felt that you would understand, Mr. 
Conniston. I guess I didn’t stop to think. 
And I am afraid of lightning, too. But I 
wanted to see you. I didn’t want to wait 
until tomorrow to hear about what hap¬ 
pened up there. Is it—so strange? ” 

Afterward he could not remember just 
what sort of answer he made. She turned, 
and he followed her through the big, 
square-cut door leading out of the hall. 
It w^as the same door with the great, slid¬ 
ing panel he had locked on that fateful 
night, years ago, when he had fought with 
her father and brother. In it, for a mo¬ 
ment, her slim figure was profiled in a 
frame of vivid light. Her mother must 
have been beautiful. That was the thought 
that flashed upon him as the room and its 
tragic memory lay before him. Every¬ 
thing came back to him vividly, and he 
was astonished at the few changes in it. 
There was the big chair with its leather 
arms, in which the overfatted creature who 


lOO 


THE RIVER’S END 


had been her father was sitting when he 
came in. It was the same table, too, and 
it seemed to him that the same odds and 
ends were on the mantel over the cobble¬ 
stone fireplace. And there was somebody’s 
picture of the Madonna still hanging be¬ 
tween two windows. The Madonna, like 
the master of the house, had been too fat 
to be beautiful. The son, an ogreish pat¬ 
tern of his father, had stood with his back 
to the Madonna, whose overfat arms had 
seemed to rest on his shoulders. He re¬ 
membered that. 

The girl was watching him closely when 
he turned toward her. He had frankly 
looked the room over, without concealing 
his intention. She was breathing a little 
unsteadily, and her hair was shimmering 
gloriously in the light of an overhead 
chandelier. She sat down with that light 
over her, motioning him to be seated op¬ 
posite her—across the same table from 
which he had snatched the copper weight 
that had killed Kirkstone. He had never 
seen anything quite so steady, quite so 
beautiful as her eyes when they looked 
across at him. He thought of McDowell’s 


lOI 


THE RIVER’S END 

suspicion and of Shan Tung and gripped 
himself hard. The same strange perfume 
hung subtly on the air he was breathing. 
On a small silver tray at his elbow lay the 
ends of three freshly burned cigarettes. 

“ Of course you remember this room? ” 

Fie nodded. Yes. It was night when 
I came, like this. The next day I went 
after John Keith.” 

She leaned toward him, her hands 
clasped in front of her on the table. You 
will tell me the truth about John Keith?” 
she asked in a low, tense voice. “ You 
swear that it will be the truth? ” 

“ I will keep nothing back from you that 
I have told Inspector McDowell,” he 
answered, fighting to meet her eyes 
steadily. “ I almost believe I may tell you 
more.” 

“ Then—did you speak the truth when 
you reported to Inspector McDowell? Is 
John Keith dead? 

Could Shan Tung meet those wonderful 
eyes as he was meeting them now, he won¬ 
dered? Could he face them and master 
them, as McDowell had hinted? To Mc¬ 
Dowell the lie had come easily to his 


102 


THE RIVER’S END 


tongue. It stuck in his throat now. With¬ 
out giving him time to prepare himself 
the girl had shot straight for the bull’s-eye, 
straight to the heart of the thing that 
meant life or death to him, and for a 
moment he found no answer. Clearly he 
was facing suspicion. She could not have 
driven the shaft intuitively. The unex¬ 
pectedness of the thing astonished him and 
then thrilled him, and in the thrill of it 
he found himself more than ever master of 
himself. 

“ Would you like to hear how utterly 
John Keith is dead and how he died?” he 
asked. 

“ Yes. That is what I must know.” 

He noticed that her hands had closed. 
Her slender fingers were clenched tight. 

I hesitate, because I have almost prom¬ 
ised to tell you even more than I told 
McDowell,” he went on. “ And that will 
not be pleasant for you to hear. He killed 
your father. There can be no sympathy 
m your heart for John Keith. It will not 
be pleasant for you to hear that I liked 
the man, and that I am sorry he is dead.” 

Go on—please.” 


THE RIVER’S END 103 

Her hands unclasped. Her fingers lay 
limp. Something faded slowly out of her 
face. It was as if she had hoped for 
something, and that hope was dying. 
Could it be possible that she had hoped 
he would say that John Keith was 
alive? 

“ Did you know this man? ” he asked. 
‘‘This John Keith?” 

She shook her head. “ No. I was away 
at school for many years. I don’t remem¬ 
ber him.” 

“ But he knew you—that is, he had seen 
you,” said Keith. “ He used to talk to 
me about you in those days when he was 
helpless and dying. He said that he was 
sorry for you, and that only because of you 
did he ever regret the justice he brought 
upon your father. You see I speak his 
words. He called it justice. He never 
weakened on that point. You have prob¬ 
ably never heard his part of the story.” 

“ No.” 

The one word forced itself from her 
lips. She was expecting him to go on, and 
waited, her eyes never for an instant leav¬ 
ing his face. 


THE RIVER’S END 


104 

He did not repeat the story exactly as 
he had told it to McDowell. The facts 
were the same, but the living fire of his 
own sympathy and his own conviction were 
in them now. He told it purely from 
Keith’s point of view, and Miriam Kirk- 
stone’s face grew whiter, and her hands 
grew tense again, as she listened for the 
first time to Keith’s own version of the 
tragedy of the room in which they were 
sitting. And then he followed Keith up 
into that land of ice and snow and gibber¬ 
ing Eskimos, and from that moment he 
was no longer Keith but spoke with the 
lips of Conniston. He described the sun¬ 
less weeks and months of madness until 
the girl’s eyes seemed to catch fire, and 
when at last he came to the little cabin in 
which Conniston had died, he was again 
John Keith. He could not have talked 
about himself as he did about the English¬ 
man. And when he came to the point 
where he buried Conniston under the floor, 
a dry, broken sob broke in upon him from 
across the table. But there were no tears 
in the girl’s eyes. Tears, perhaps, would 
have hidden from him the desolation he 


THE RIVER’S END 105 

saw there. But she did not give in. Her 
white throat twitched. She tried to draw 
her breath steadily. And then she said: 

“And that—was John Keith!” 

He bowed his head in confirmation of 
the lie, and, thinking of Conniston, he said: 
“ He was the finest gentleman I ever knew. 
And I am sorry he is dead.” 

“ And I, too, am sorry.” 

She was reaching a hand across the tabic 
to him, slowly, hesitatingly. He stared at 
her. 

“ You mean that? ” 

“ Yes, I am sorry.” 

He took her hand. For a moment her 
fingers tightened about his own. Then 
they relaxed and drew gently away from 
him. In that moment he saw a sudden 
change come into her face. She was look¬ 
ing beyond him, over his right shoulder. 
Her eyes widened, her pupils dilated under 
his gaze, and she held her breath. With 
the swift caution of the man-hunted he 
turned. The room was empty behind him. 
There was nothing but a window at his 
back. The rain was drizzling against it, 
and he noticed that the curtain was not 


io6 THE RIVER’S END 

drawn, as they were drawn at the other 
windows. Even as he looked, the girl 
went to it and pulled down the shade. 
He knew that she had seen something, 
something that had startled her for a 
moment, but he did not question her. In¬ 
stead, as if he had noticed nothing, he 
asked if he might light a cigar. 

I see someone smokes,” he excused 
himself, nodding at the cigarette butts. 

He was watching her closely and would 
have recalled the words in the next breath. 
Pie had caught her. Her brother was out 
of town. And there was a distinctly un- 
American perfume in the smoke that some¬ 
one had left in the room. He saw the bit 
of red creeping up her throat into her 
cheeks, and his conscience shamed him. It 
was difficult for him not to believe Mc¬ 
Dowell now. Shan Tung had been there. 
It was Shan Tung who had left the hall as 
he entered. Probably it was Shan Tung 
whose face she had seen at the window. 

What she said amazed him. ‘‘Yes, it is 
a shocking habit of mine, Mr. Conniston. 
I learned to smoke in the East. Is it so 
very bad, do you think? ” 


THE RIVER’S END 107 

He fairly shook himself. He wanted to 
say, “ You beautiful little liar, I’d like to 
call your bluff right now, but I won’t, be¬ 
cause I’m sorry for you!” Instead, he 
nipped off the end of his cigar, and said: 

In England, you know, the ladies 
smoke a great deal. Personally I may be 
a little prejudiced. I don’t know that it is 
sinful, especially when one uses such good! 
judgment—in orientals.” And then he was 
powerless to hold himself back. He smiled 
at her frankly, unafraid. “ I don’t believe 
you smoke,” he added. 

He rose to his feet, still smiling across 
at her, like a big brother waiting for her 
confidence. She was not alarmed at the 
directness with which he had guessed the 
truth. She was no longer embarrassed. 
She seemed for a moment to be looking 
through him and into him, a strange and 
yearning desire glowing dully in her eyes. 
He saw her throat twitching again, and he 
was filled with an infinite compassion for 
this daughter of the man he had killed. 
But he kept it within himself. He had 
gone far enough. It was for her to speak. 
At the door she gave him her hand again, 


io8 THE RIVER’S END 

bidding him good-night. She looked 
pathetically helpless, and he thought that 
someone ought to be there with the right 
to take her in his arms and comfort her. 

“ You will come again? ” she whispered. 
‘‘Yes, I am coming again,” he said. 
“ Good-night.” 

He passed out into the drizzle. The 
door closed behind him, but not before 
there came to him once more that choking 
sob from the throat of Miriam Kirkstone. 


IX 


K EITH’S hand was on the butt of his 
revolver as he made his way through 
the black night. He could not see the gravel 
path under his feet but could only feel it. 
Something that was more than a guess 
made him feel that Shan Tung was not 
far away, and he wondered if it was a pre¬ 
monition, and what it meant. With the 
keen instinct of a hound he was scenting 
for a personal danger. He passed through 
the gate and began the downward slope 
toward town, and not until then did he 
begin adding things together and analyz¬ 
ing the situation as it had transformed 
itself since he had stood in the door of 
the Shack, welcoming the storm from the 
western mountains. He thought that he 
had definitely made up his mind then; now 
it was chaotic. He could not leave Prince 
Albert immediately, as the inspiration had 
moved him a few hours before. Mc¬ 
Dowell had practically given him an as- 

icg 


flio 


THE RIVER’S END 

signment. And Miss Kirks tone was hold¬ 
ing him. Also Shan Tung. He felt 
within himself the sensation of one who 
was traveling on very thin ice, yet he 
could not tell just where or why it was 
thin. 

Just a fool hunch,” he assured himself. 
“ Why the deuce should I let a confounded 
Chinaman and a pretty girl get on my 
nerves at this stage of the game? If it 

wasn’t for McDowell-” 

And there he stopped. He had fought 
too long at the raw edge of things to allow 
himself to be persuaded by delusions, and 
he confessed that it was John Keith who 
was holding him, that in some inexplioable 
way John Keith, though officially dead and 
buried, was mixed up in a mysterious af¬ 
fair in which Miriam Kirkstone and Shan 
Tung were the moving factors. And inas¬ 
much as he was now Derwent Conniston 
and no longer John Keith, he took the 
logical point of arguing that the aHair was 
none of his business, and that he could go 
on to the mountains if he pleased. Only in 
that direction could he see ice of a sane 
and perfect thickness, to carry out the 



Ill 


THE RIVER’S END 

metaphor in his head. He could report 
indifferently to McDowell, forget Miss 
Kirkstone, and disappear from the menace 
of Shan Tung’s eyes. John Keith, he re¬ 
peated, would be officially dead, and being 
dead, the law would have no further inter¬ 
est in him. 

He prodded himself on with this 
thought as he fumbled his way through 
darkness down into town. Miriam Kirk¬ 
stone in her golden way was alluring; the 
mystery that shadowed the big house on 
the hill was fascinating to his hunting in¬ 
stincts; he had the desire, growing fast, to 
come at grips with Shan Tung. But he 
had not foreseen these things, and neither 
had^Conniston foreseen them. They had 
planned only for the salvation of John 
Keith’s precious neck, and tonight he had 
almost forgotten the existence of that un¬ 
pleasant reality, the hangnfan. Truth set¬ 
tled upon him with depressing effect, and 
an infinite loneliness turned his mind again 
to the mountains of his dreams. 

The town was empty of life. Lights 
glowed here and there through the mist; 
now and then a door opened; down near 


II2 


THE RIVER’S END 


the river a dog howled forlornly. Every¬ 
thing was shut against him. There were 
no longer homes where he might call and 
be greeted with a cheery “ Good evening, 
Keith. Glad to see you. Come in out of 
the wet.” He could not even go to Dug¬ 
gan, his old river friend. He realized now 
that his old friends were the very ones he 
must avoid most carefully to escape self- 
betrayal. Friendship no longer existed for 
him; the town was a desert without an 
oasis where he might reclaim some of the 
things he had lost. Memories he had 
treasured gave place to bitter ones. His 
own townfolk, of all people, were his 
readiest enemies, and his loneliness 
clutched him tighter, until the air itself 
seemed thick and difficult to breathe. For 
the time Derv^ent Conniston was utterly 
submerged in the overwhelming yearnings 
of John Keith. 

He dropped into a dimly lighted shop 
to purchase a box of cigars. It was de¬ 
serted except for the proprietor. His 
elbow bumped into a telephone. He 
would call up Wallie and tell him to 
have a good fire waiting for him, and in 


THE RIVER’S END 113 

the company of that fire he would do a 
lot of thinking before getting into com¬ 
munication with McDowell. 

It was not Wallie who answered him, 
and he was about to apologize for getting 
the wrong number when the voice at the 
other end asked, 

Is that you, Conniston?” 

It was McDowell. The discovery gave 
him a distinct shock. What could the In¬ 
spector be doing up at the Shack in his 
absence? Besides, there was an imperative 
demand in the question that shot at him 
over the wire. McDowell had half 
shouted it. 

“Yes, it’s I,” he said rather feebly. 
“ I’m down-town, stocking up on some 
cigars. What’s the excitement? ” 

“ Don’t ask questions but hustle up 
here,” McDowell fired back. “ I’ve got 
the surprise of your life waiting for you! ” 
Keith heard the receiver at the other end 
go up with a bang. Something had hap¬ 
pened at the Shack, and McDowell was 
excited. He went out puzzled. For some 
reason he was in no great hurry to reach 
the top of the hill. He was beginning to 


THE RIVER’S END 


114 

expect things to happen—too many things 
—and in the stress of the moment he felt 
the incongruity of the friendly box of 
cigars tucked under his arm. The hard¬ 
est luck he had ever run up against had 
never quite killed his sense of humor, and 
he chuckled. His fortunes were indeed at 
a low ebb when he found a bit of comfort 
in hugging a box of cigars still closer. 

He could see that every room in the 
Shack was lighted, when he came to the 
crest of the slope, but the shades were 
drawn. He wondered if Wallie had 
pulled down the curtains, or if it was a 
caution on McDowell’s part against pos¬ 
sible espionage. Suspicion m.ade him 
transfer the box of cigars to his left arm 
so that his right was free. Somewhere in 
the darkness Conniston’s voice was urging 
him, as it had urged him up in the cabin 
on the Barren: Don’t walk into a noose. 
If it comes to a fight, fight!'' 

And then something happened that 
brought his heart to a dead stop. He was 
close to the door. His ear was against 
it. And he was listening to a voice. It 
was not Wallie’s, and it was not the iron 


THE RIVER’S END 1115 

man’s. It was a woman’s voice, or a 
girl’s. 

He opened the door and entered, taking 
swiftly the two or three steps that carried 
him across the tiny vestibule to the big 
room. His entrance was so sudden that 
the tableau in front of him was unbroken 
for a moment. Birch logs were blazing in 
the fireplace. In the big chair sat 
McDowell, partly turned, a smoking cigar 
poised in his fingers, staring at him. 
Seated on a footstool, with her chin in the 
cup of her hands, was a girl. At first, 
blinded a little by the light, Keith thought 
she was a child, a remarkably pretty child 
with wide-open, half-startled eyes and a 
wonderful crown of glowing, brown hair 
in which he could still see the shimmer of 
wet. He took off his hat and brushed the 
water from his eyes. McDowell did not 
move. Slowly the girl rose to her feet. 
It was then that Keith saw she was not a 
child. Perhaps she was eighteen, a slim, 
tired-looking, little thing, wonderfully 
pretty, and either on the verge of laughing 
or crying. Perhaps it was halfway be¬ 
tween. To his growing discomfiture she 


ii6 THE RIVER’S END 

came slowly toward him with a strange 
and wonderful look in her face. And 
McDowell still sat there staring. 

His heart thumped with an emotion he 
had no time to question. In those wide- 
open, shining eyes of the girl he sensed 
unspeakable tragedy—for him. And then 
the girl’s arms were reaching out to him, 
and she was crying in that voice that 
trembled and broke between sobs and 
laughter; 

Derry, don’t you know me? Don’t you 
know me? ” 

He stood like one upon whom had fallen 
the curse of the dumb. She was within 
arm’s reach of him, her face white as a 
cameo, her eyes glowing like newly-fired 
stars, her slim throat quivering, and her 
arms reaching toward him. 

“ Derry, don’t you know me? Don't you 
inow< me? " 

It was a sob, a cry. McDowell had 
risen. Overwhelmingly there swept upon 
Keith an impulse that rocked him to the 
depth of his soul. He opened his arms, 
and in an instant the girl was in them. 
Quivering, and sobbing, and laughing she 


THE RIVER’S END 117 

was on his breast. He felt the crush of her 
soft hair against his face, her arms were 
about his neck, and she was pulling his 
head down and kissing him—not once or 
twice, but again and again, passionately 
and without shame. His own arms 
tightened. He heard McDowell’s voice— 
a distant and non-essential voice it seemed 
to him now—saying that he would leave 
them alone and that he would see them 
again tomorrow. He heard the door open 
and close. McDowell was gone. And 
the soft little arms were still tight about 
his neck. The sweet crush of hair smoth¬ 
ered his face, and on his breast she was 
crying now like a baby. He held her 
closer. A wild exultation seized upon him, 
and every fiber in his body responded to 
its thrill, as tautly-stretched wires respond 
to an electrical storm. It passed swiftly, 
burning itself out, and his heart was left 
dead. He heard a sound made by Wallie 
out in the kitchen. He saw the walls of 
the room again, the chair in which Mc¬ 
Dowell had sat, the blazing fire. His arms 
relaxed. The girl raised her head and put 
her two hands to his face, looking at him 


ii8 THE RIVER’S END 

with eyes which Keith no longer failed to 
recognize. They were the eyes that had 
looked at him out of the faded picture in 
Conniston’s watch. 

“ Kiss me, Derry! ” 

It was impossible not to obey. Her lips 
clung to him. There was love, adoration, 
in their caress. 

And then she was crying again, with her 
arms around him tight and her face hidden 
against him, and he picked her up as he 
would have lifted a child, and carried her 
to the big chair in front of the fire. He 
put her in it and stood before her, trying 
to smile. Her hair had loosened, and the 
shining mass of it had fallen about her 
face and to her shoulders. She was more 
than ever like a little girl as she looked 
up at him, her eyes worshiping him, her 
lips trying to smile, and one little hand 
dabbing her eyes with a tiny handkerchief 
that was already wet and crushed. 

You—you don’t seem very glad to see 
me, Derry.” 

“ I—I’m just stunned,” he managed to 

say. ‘VYou see-” 

It is a shocking surprise, Derry. I 



THE RIVEPv’S END 


119 

meant it to be. IVe been planning it for 
years and years and years! Please take off 
your coat—it’s dripping wet!—and sit 
down near me, on that stool! ” 

Again he obeyed. He was big for the 
stool. 

You are glad to see me, aren’t you, 
Derry? ” 

She was leaning over the edge of the big 
chair, and one of her hands went to his 
damp hair, brushing it back. It was a 
wonderful touch. He had never felt any¬ 
thing like it before in his life, and involun¬ 
tarily he bent his head a little. In a 
moment she had hugged it up close to her. 

“You are glad, aren’t you, Derry? Say 
^ yes.’ ” 

“ Yes,” he whispered. 

He could feel the swift, excited beating 
of her heart. 

“ And I’m never going back again—to 
them/' he heard her say, something sud¬ 
denly low and fierce in her voice. 

Never! I’m going to stay with you 
always, Derry. Always!” 

She put her lips close to his ear and 
whispered mysteriously. “ They don’t 


120 


THE RIVER’S END 

know where I am. Maybe they think I’m 
dead. But Colonel Reppington knows. I 
told him I was coming if I had to walk 
round the world to get here. He said he’d 
keep my secret, and gave me letters to some 
awfully nice people over here. I’ve been 
over six months. And when I saw your 
name in one of those dry-looking, blue- 
covered, paper books the Mounted Police 
get out, I just dropped down on my knees 
and thanked the good Lord, Derry. I 
knew I’d find you somewhere—sometime. 
I haven’t slept two winks since leaving 
Montreal! And I guess I really fright¬ 
ened that big man with the terrible mus¬ 
taches, for when I rushed in on him to¬ 
night, dripping wet, and said, ‘ I’m Miss 
Mary Josephine Conniston, and I want my 
brother,’ his eyes grew bigger and bigger 
until I thought they were surely going to 
pop out at me. And then he swore. He 
said, ^ My Gawd, I didn’t know he had a 
sister!”’ 

Keith’s heart was choking him. So this 
wonderful little creature was Derwent 
Conniston’s sister! And she was claiming 
him. She thought he was her brother! 


THE RIVER’S END 121 

“—And I love him because he treated 
me so nicely,” she was saying. He really 
hugged me, Derry. I guess he didn’t think 
I was away past eighteen. And he 
wrapped me up in a big oilskin, and we 
came up here. And—O Derry, Derry— 
why did you do it? Why didn’t you let 
me know? Don’t you—want me here? ” 

He heard, but his mind had swept be¬ 
yond her to the little cabin in the edge of 
the Great Barren where Derwent Connis- 
ton lay dead. He heard the wind moan¬ 
ing, as it had moaned that night the Eng¬ 
lishman died, and he saw again that last 
and unspoken yearning in Conniston’s eyes. 
And he knew now why Conniston’s face 
had followed him through the gray gloom 
and why he had felt the mysterious pres¬ 
ence of him long after he had gone. Some¬ 
thing that was Conniston entered into him 
now. In the throbbing chaos of his brain 
a voice was whispering, “ She is yours, she 
is yours.” 

Hie arms tightened about her, and a 
voice that was not unlike John Keith’s 
voice said: ^‘Yes, I want you! I want 
you! ” 




X 


F or a space Keith did not raise his 
head. The girl’s arms were about 
him close, and he could feel the warm 
pressure of her cheek against his hair. 
The realization of his crime was already 
weighing his soul like a piece of lead, yet 
out of that soul had come the cry, “ I 
want you—I want you!” and it still beat 
with the voice of that immeasurable yearn¬ 
ing even as his lips grew tight and he saw 
himself the monstrous fraud he was. This 
strange little, wonderful creature had come 
to him from out of a dead world, and her 
lips, and her arms, and the soft caress of 
her hands had sent his own world reeling 
about his head so swiftly that he had been 
drawn into a maelstrom to which he could 
find no bottom. Before McDowell she 
had claimed him. And before McDowell 
he had accepted her. He had lived the 
great lie as he had strengthened himself 
to live it, but success was no longer a 


122 


THE RIVER’S END 123 

triumph. There rushed into his brain like 
a consuming flame the desire to confess the 
truth, to tell this girl whose arms were 
about him that he was not Derwent Con- 
niston, her brother, but John Keith, the 
murderer. Something drove it back, some¬ 
thing that was still more potent, more de¬ 
manding, the overwhelming urge of that 
fighting force in every man which calls for 
self-preservation. 

Slowly he drew himself away from her, 
knowing that for this night at least his 
back was to the wall. She was smiling at 
him from out of the big chair, and in spite 
of himself he smiled back at her. 

I must send you to bed now, Mary 
Josephine, and tomorrow we will talk 
everything over,” he said. You’re so 
tired you’re ready to fall asleep in a 
minute.” 

Tiny, puckery lines came into her pretty 
forehead. It was a trick he loved at first 
sight. 

“ Do you know, Derry, I almost believe 
you’ve changed a lot. You used to call 
me ^ Juddy.’ But now that I’m grown up, 
I think I like Mary Josephine better, 


;I24 THE RIVER’S END 

though you oughtn’t to be quite so stiff 
about it. Derry, tell me honest—are you 
afraid of me? ” 

Afraid of you! ” 

Yes, because I’m grown up. Don’t 
you like me as well as you did one, two, 
three, seven years ago? If you did, you 
wouldn’t tell me to go to bed just a few 
minutes after you’ve seen me for the first 

time in all those—those- Derry, I’m 

going to cry! I am! 

‘‘Don’t,” he pleaded. “Please don’t!” 

He felt like a hundred-horned bull in a 
very small china shop. Mary Josephine 
herself saved the day for him by jumping 
suddenly from the big chair, forcing him 
into it, and snuggling herself on his 
knees. 

“There!” She looked at a tiny watch 
on her wrist. “ We’re going to bed in two 
hours. We’ve got a lot to talk about that 
won’t wait until tomorrow, Derry. You 
understand what I mean. I couldn’t sleep 
until you’ve told me. And you must tell 
me the truth. I’ll love you just the same, 
no matter what it is. Derry, Derry, <why 
did you do it? 



THE RIVER’S END 125 

Do what? ” he asked stupidly. 

The delicious softness went out of the 
slim little body on his knees. It grew 
rigid. He looked hopelessly into the fire, 
but he could feel the burning inquiry in 
the girl’s eyes. He sensed a swift change 
passing through her. She seemed scarcely 
to breathe, and he knew that his answer 
had been more than inadequate. It either 
confessed or feigned an ignorance of some¬ 
thing which it would have been impossible 
for him to forget had he been Conniston. 
He looked up at her at last. The joyous 
flush had gone out of her face. It was a 
little drawn. Her hand, which had been 
snuggling his neck caressingly, slipped 
down from his shoulder. 

I guess—you’d rather I hadn’t come, 
Derry,” she said, fighting to keep a break 
out of her voice. “ And I’ll go back, if 
you want to send me. But I’ve always 
dreamed of your promise, that some day 
you’d send for me or come and get me, 
and I’d like to know why before you tell 
me to go. Why have you hidden away 
from me all these years, leaving me among 
those who you knew hated me as they 


126 


THE RIVER’S END 


hated you? Was it because you didn’t 

care? Or was it because—because-” 

She bent her head and whispered strangely, 
‘‘Was it because you were afraid? ” 

“Afraid?” he repeated slowly, staring 

again into the fire. “ Afraid-” He 

was going to add “ Of what? ” but caught 
the words and held them back. 

The birch fire leaped up with a sudden 
roar into the chimney, and from the heart 
of the flame he caught again that strange 
and all-pervading thrill, the sensation of 
Derwent Conniston’s presence very near 
to him. It seemed to him that for an 
instant he caught a flash of Conniston’s 
face, and somewhere within him was a 
whispering which was Conniston’s voice. 
He v/as possessed by a weird and master¬ 
ful force that swept over him and con¬ 
quered him, a thing that was more than 
intuition and greater than physical desire. 
It was inspiration. He knew that the 
Englishman would have him play the 
game as he was about to play it now. 

The girl was waiting for him to answer. 
Her lips had grown a little more tense. 
His hesitation, the restraint in his welcome 




THE RIVER’S END 


127 

of her, and his apparent desire to evade 
that mysterious something which seemed 
to mean so much to her had brought a 
shining pain into her eyes. He had seen 
such a look in the eyes of creatures 
physically hurt. He reached out with his 
hands and brushed back the thick, soft 
hair from about her face. His fingers 
buried themselves in the silken disarray, 
and he looked for a moment straight into 
her eyes before he spoke. 

“ Little girl, will you tell me the truth? ” 
he asked. “ Do I look like the old Der¬ 
went Conniston, your Derwent Conniston? 
Do I?” 

Her voice was small and troubled, yet 
the pain was slowly fading out of her eyes 
as she felt the passionate embrace of his 
fingers in her hair. “No. You are 
changed.” 

“ Yes, I am changed. A part of Der¬ 
went Conniston died seven years ago. 
That part of him was dead until he came 
through that door tonight and saw you. 
And then it flickered back into life. It is 
returning slowly, slowly. That which was 
dead is beginning to rouse itself, beginning 


128 


THE RIVER’S END 


to remember. See, little Mary Josephine. 

It was this! ” 

He drew a hand to his forehead and 
placed a finger on the scar. “ I got that 
seven years ago. It killed a half of Der¬ 
went Conniston, the part that should have 
lived. Do you understand? Until to¬ 
night-” 

Her eyes startled him, they were grow- 
ing so big and dark and staring, livi^j^^r"^^ 
fires of understanding and horror. " 

hard for him to go on with the lie. 
many weeks I was dead,” he struggled on." ^ 
‘‘And when I came to life physically, I 
had forgotten a great deal. I had my 
name, my identity, but only ghastly 
dreams and visions of what had gone be¬ 
fore. I remembered you, but it was in a 
dream, a strange and haunting dream that 
was with me always. It seems to me that 
for an age I have been seeking for a face, 
a voice, something I loved above all else 
on earth, something which was always 
near and yet was never found. It was . 
you, Mary Josephine, you! ” 

V/as it the real Derwent Conniston 
speaking now? He felt again that over- 



THE RIVER’S END 129 

whelming force from within which was not 
his own. The thing that had begun as a 
lie struck him now as a thing that was 
truth. It was he, John Ke^th^^-whb had 
been questing and yearning, hdping. 
It was John Keith, and not Conniston'f* wjio 
had returned into a wo^ld filled with a 
desolation of loneliness, and it was to John 
Keith that a beneficent God had sent this 
wonderful creature an hour that was 
blackest in its despair. He was not lying 
now. He was fighting. He was fighting 
to keep for himself the one atom of human¬ 
ity that meant more to him than all the 
rest of the human race, fighting to keep a 
great love that had come to him out of a 
world in which he no longer had a friend 
or a home, and to that fight his soul went 
out as a drowning man grips at a spar on 
a sea. As the girl’s hands came to his face 
and he heard the yearning, grief-filled cr^ 
of his name on her lips, he no longer 
sensed the things he was saying, but held 
her close in his arms, kissing her mouth, 
and her eyes, and her hair, and repeating 
over and over again that nov/ he had found 
her he would never give her up. Her 


130 THE RIVER’S END 

arms clung to him. They were like two 
children brought together after a long 
separation, and Keith knew that Connis- 
ton’s love for this girl who was his sister 
must have been a splendid thing. And his 
lie had saved Conniston as well as himself. 
There had been no time to question the 
reason for the Englishman’s neglect—for 
his apparent desertion of the girl who had 
come across the sea to find him. Tonight 
it was sufficient that he was Conniston, and 
that to him the girl had fallen as a 
precious heritage. 

He stood up with her at last, holding her 
away from him a little so that he could 
look into her face wet with tears and shin¬ 
ing with happiness. She reached up a 
hand to his face, so that it touched the 
scar, and in her eyes he saw an infinite 
pity, a luminously tender glow of love and 
sympathy and understanding that no meas¬ 
urements could compass. Gently her hand 
stroked his scarred forehead. He felt his 
old world slipping away from under his 
feet, and with his triumph there surged 
over him a thankfulness for that inde¬ 
finable something that had come to him 


THE RIVER’S END 


131 

in time to give him the strength and the 
courage to lie. For she believed him, 
utterly and without the shadow of a sus¬ 
picion she believed him. 

Tomorrow you will help me to remem¬ 
ber a great many things,” he said. “ And 
now will you let me send you to bed, Mary 
Josephine? ” 

She was looking at the scar. “ And all 
those years I didn’t know,” she whispered. 

I didn’t kno\v. They told me you were 
dead, but I knew it was a lie. It was 
Colonel Reppington-” She saw some¬ 

thing in his face that stopped her. 

Derry, dont you remember? 

“ I shall—tomorrow. ^ But tonight I can 
see nothing and think of nothing but you. 
Tomorrow-” 

She drew his head down swiftly and 
kissed the brand made by the heated barrel 
of the Englishman’s pistol. Yes, yes, we 
must go to bed now, Derry,” she cried 
quickly. You must not think too much. 
Tonight it must just be of me. Tomorrow 
everything will come out right, everything. 
And now you may send me to bed. Do 
you remember-” 


THE RIVER’S END 


A She caught herself, biting her lip to 
keep back the word. 

Tell me,” he urged. “ Do I remember 
what? ” 

How you used to come in at the very 
last and tuck me in at night, Derry? And 
how we used to whisper to ourselves there 
in the darkness, and at last you would kiss 
me good-night? It was the kiss that 
always made me go to sleep.” 

He nodded. Yes, I remember,” he 
said. 

He led her to the spare room, and 
brought in her two travel-worn bags, and 
turned on the light. It was a man’s room, 
but Mary Josephine stood for a moment 
surveying it with delight. 

‘‘ It’s home, Derry, real home,” she 
whispered. 

He did not explain to her that it was a 
borrowed home and that this was his first 
night in it. Such unimportant details 
would rest until tomorrow. He showed 
her the bath and its water system and then 
explained to Wallie that his sister was in 
the house and he would have to bunk in 
the kitchen. At the last he knew what he 


THE RIVER’S END 


133 

was expected to do, v/hat he must do. 
He kissed Mary Josephine good night. 
He kissed her twice. And Mary Josephine 
kissed him and gave him a hug the like of 
which he had never experienced until this 
night. It sent him back to the fire with 
blood that danced like a drunken man’s. 

He turned the lights out and for an hour 
sat in the dying glow of the birch. For 
the first time since he had come from 
Miriam Kirkstone’s he had the oppor¬ 
tunity to think, and in thinking he found 
his brain crowded with cold and unemo¬ 
tional fact. He saw his lie in all its naked 
immensity. Yet he was not sorry that he 
had lied. He had saved Conniston. He 
had saved himself. And he had saved 
Conniston’s sister, to love, to fight for, to 
protect. It had not been a Judas lie but a 
lie with his heart and his soul and all the 
manhood in him behind it. To have told 
the truth would have made him his own 
executioner, it would have betrayed the 
dead Englishman who had given to him 
his name and all that he possessed, and it 
v/ould have dragged to a pitiless grief the 
heart of a girl for whom the sun still con- 


THE RIVER’S END 


134 

tinued to shine. No regret rose before 
him now. He felt no shame. All that he 
saw was the fight, the tremendous fight, 
ahead of him, his fight to make good as 
Conniston, his fight to play the game as 
Conniston would have him play it. The 
inspiration that had come to him as he 
stood facing the storm from the western 
mountains possessed him again. He would 
go to the river’s end as he had planned to 
go before McDowell told him of Shan 
Tung and Miriam Kirkstone. And he 
would not go alone. Mary Josephine 
would go with him. 

It was midnight when he rose from the 
big chair and went to his room. The door 
was closed. He opened it and entered. 
Even as his hand groped for the switch 
on the wall, his nostrils caught the scent 
of something which was familiar and yet 
which should not have been there. It 
filled the room, just as it had filled the big 
hall at the Kirkstone house, the almost 
sickening fragrance of agallochum burned 
in a cigarette. It hung like a heavy 
incense. 

Keith’s eyes glared as he scanned the 


THE RIVER’S END 135 

room under the lights, half expecting to 
set Shan Tung sitting there waiting for 
him. It was empty. His eyes leaped to 
the two windows. The shade was drawn 
at one, the other was up, and the window 
itself was open an inch or two above the 
sill. Keith’s hand gripped his pistol as he 
went to it and drew the curtain. Then he 
turned to the table on which were the 
reading lamp and Brady’s pipes and to¬ 
bacco and magazines. On an ash-tray lay 
the stub of a freshly burned cigarette. 
Shan Tung had come secretly, but he had 
made no effort to cover his presence. 

It was then that Keith saw something 
on the table which had not been there 
before. It was a small, rectangular, teak- 
wood box no larger than a half of the 
palm of his hand. He had noticed Miriam 
Kirkstone’s nervous fingers toying with just 
such a box earlier in the evening. They 
were identical in appearance. Both were 
covered with an exquisite fabric of oriental 
carving, and the wood was stained and 
polished until it shone with the dark luster 
of ebony. Instantly it flashed upon him 
that this was the same box he had seen at 


136 THE RIVER’S END 

Miriam’s. She had sent it to him, and 
Shan Tung had been her messenger. The 
absurd thought was in his head as he took 
up a small white square of card that lay 
on top of the box. The upper side of this 
card was blank; on the other side, in a 
script as exquisite in its delicacy as the 
carving itself, were the words: 

“ WITH THE COMPLIMENTS OF SHAN TUNG.” 

In another moment Keith had opened 
the box. Inside was a carefully folded slip 
of paper, and on this paper was written 
a single line. Keith’s heart stopped beat¬ 
ing, and his blood ran cold as he read what 
it held for him, a message of doom from 
Shan Tung in nine words: 

“ WHAT HAPPENED TO DERWENT CONNIS- 
TON ? DID YOU KILL HIM ? ” 


XI 


S TUNNED by a shock that for a few 
moments paralyzed every nerve center 
in his body, John Keith stood with the slip 
of white paper in his hands. He was dis¬ 
covered! That was the one thought that 
pounded like a hammer in his brain. He 
was discovered in the very hour of his 
triumph and exaltation, in that hour when 
the world had opened its portals of joy 
and hope for him again and when life it¬ 
self, after four years of hell, was once 
more worth the living. Had the shock 
come a few hours before, he would have 
taken it differently. He was expecting it 
then. He had expected it when he en¬ 
tered McDowell’s office the first time. He 
was prepared for it afterward. Discovery, 
failure, and death were possibilities of the 
hazardous game he was playing, and he 
was unafraid, because he had only his life 
to lose, a life that was not much more 
137 


138 THE RIVER’S END 

than a hopeless derelict at most. Now it 
was different. Mary Josephine had come 
like some rare and wonderful alchemy to 
transmute for him all leaden things into 
gold. In a few minutes she had upset the 
world. She had literally torn aside for 
him the hopeless chaos in which he saw 
himself struggling, flooding him with the 
warm radiance of a great love and a still 
greater desire. On his lips he could feel 
the soft thrill of her good-night kiss and 
about his neck the embrace of her soft 
arms. She had not gone to sleep yet. 
Across in the other room she was thinking 
of him, loving him; perhaps she was on 
her knees praying for him, even as he 
held in his fingers Shan Tung’s mysterious 
forewarning of his doom. 

The first impulse that crowded in upon 
him was that of flight, the selfish impulse 
of personal salvation. He could get away. 
The night would swallow him up. A mo¬ 
ment later he was mentally castigating 
himself for the treachery of that impulse 
to Mary Josephine. His floundering senses 
began to readjust themselves. 

Why had Shan Tung given him this 


THE RIVER’S END 


139 

warning? Why had he not gone straight 
to Inspector McDowell with the astound¬ 
ing disclosure of the fact that the man 
supposed to be Derwent Conniston was not 
Derwent Conniston, but John Keith, the 
murderer of Miriam Kirkstone’s father? 

The questions brought to Keith a new 
thrill. He read the note again. It was a 
definite thing stating a certainty and not a 
guess. Shan Tung had not shot at ran¬ 
dom. He knew. He knew that he was 
not Derwent Conniston but John Keith. 
And he believed that he had killed the 
Englishman to steal his identity. In the 
face of these things he had not gone to 
McDowell! Keith’s eyes fell upon the 
card again. “With the compliments of 
Shan Tung.” What did the words mean? 
Why had Shan Tung written them unless 
—with his compliments—he was giving 
him a warning and the chance to save 
himself? 

His immediate alarm grew less. The 
longer he contemplated the slip of paper 
in his hand, the more he became convinced 
that the inscrutable Shan Tung was the 
last individual in the world to stage a bit 


THE RIVER’S END 


140 

of melodrama without some good reason 
for it. There was but one conclusion he 
could arrive at. The Chinaman was play¬ 
ing a game of his own, and he had taken 
this unusual way of advising Keith to 
make a getaway while the going was good. 
It was evident that his intention had been 
to avoid the possibility of a personal dis¬ 
cussion of the situation. That, at least, was 
Keith’s first impression. 

He turned to examine the window. 
There was no doubt that Shan Tung had 
come in that way. Both the sill and cur¬ 
tain bore stains of water and mud, and 
there was wet dirt on the floor. For once 
the immaculate oriental had paid no at¬ 
tention to his feet. At the door leading 
into the big room Keith saw where he had 
stood for some time, listening, probably 
when McDowell and Mary Josephine 
were in the outer room waiting for him. 
Suddenly his eyes riveted themselves on 
the middle panel of the door. Brady had 
intended his color scheme to be old ivory 
—the panel itself was nearly white—and 
on it Shan Tung had written heavily with 
a lead pencil the hour of his presence, 


THE RIVER’S END 


141* 

10.45 P.M.^' Keith’s amazement found 
voice in a low exclamation. He looked at 
his watch. It was a quarter-hour after 
twelve. He had returned to the Shack 
before ten, and the clever Shan Tung was 
letting him know in this cryptic fashion 
that for more than three-quarters of an 
hour he had listened at the door and spied 
upon him and Mary Josephine through the 
keyhole. 

Had even such an insignificant person 
as Wallie been guilty of that act, Keith 
would have felt like thrashing him. It 
surprised himself that he experienced no 
personal feeling of outrage at Shan Tung’s 
frank confession of eavesdropping. A 
subtle significance began to attach itself 
more and more to the story his room was 
telling him. He knew that Shan Tung 
had left none of the marks of his presence 
out of bravado, but with a definite pur¬ 
pose. Keith’s psychological mind was at 
all times acutely ready to seize upon pos¬ 
sibilities, and just as his positiveness of 
Conniston’s spiritual presence had inspired 
him to act his lie with Mary Josephine, 
so did the conviction possess him now that 


142 THE RIVER’S END 

his room held for him a message of the 
most vital importance. 

In such an emergency Keith employed 
his own method. He sat down, lighted his 
pipe again, and centered the full resource 
of his mind on Shan Tung, dissociating 
himself from the room snd the adventure 
of the night as much as possible in his ob¬ 
jective analysis of ' e . an. Four distinct 
emotional factors entered into that analysis 
—fear, distrust, hatred, personal enmity. 
To his surp’*‘^e he found himself drifting 
steadily into . n unusual and unexpected 
mental attitude. From the time he had 
faced Shan Tung in the inspector’s office, 
he had regarded him as the chief enemy 
of his freedom, his one great menace. 
Now he felt neither personal enmity nor 
hatred for him. Fear and distrust re¬ 
mained, but the fear was impersonal and 
the distrust that of one who watches a 
clever opponent in a game or a fight. His 
conception of Shan Tung changed. He 
found his occidental mind running paral¬ 
lel with the oriental, bridging the spaces 
which otherwise it never would have 
crossed, and at the end it seized upon the 


THE RIVER’S END 


143 

key. It proved to him that his first im¬ 
pulse had been wrong. Shan Tung had 
not expected him to seek safety in flight. 
He had given the white man credit for a 
larger understanding than that. His de¬ 
sire, first of all, had been to let Keith 
know that he was not the only one who 
was playing for big stakes, and that an¬ 
other, Shan Tung himself, was gambling 
a hazard of his own, and that the fraudu¬ 
lent Derwent Conniston was a trump card 
in that game. 

To impress this upon Keith he had, first 
of all, acquainted him with the fact that 
he had seen through his deception and that 
he knew he was John Keith and not Der¬ 
went Conniston. He had also let him 
know that he believed he had killed the 
Englishman, a logical supposition under 
the circumstances. This information he 
had left for Keith was not in the form of 
an intimidation. There was, indeed, some¬ 
thing very near apologetic courtesy in the 
presence of the card bearing Shan Tung’s 
compliments. The penciling of the hour 
on the panel of the door, without other 
notation, was a polite and suggestive hint. 


THE RIVER’S END 


144 

He wanted Keith to know that he under¬ 
stood his peculiar situation up until that 
particular time, that he had heard and pos¬ 
sibly seen much that had passed between 
him and Mary Josephine. The partly 
opened window, the mud and wet on cur¬ 
tains and floor, and the cigarette stubs 
were all to call Keith’s attention to the 
box on the table. 

Keith could not but feel a certain sort of 
admiration for the Chinaman. The two 
questions he must answer now were. What 
was Shan Tung’s game? and What did 
Shan Tung expect him to do? 

Instantly Miriam Kirkstone flashed 
upon him as the possible motive for Shan 
Tung’s visit. He recalled her unexpected 
and embarrassing question of that evening, 
in which she had expressed a suspicion 
and a doubt as to John Keith’s death. 
He had gone to Miriam’s at eight. It must 
have been very soon after that, and after 
she had caught a glimpse of the face at 
the window, that Shan Tung had hurried 
to the Shack. 

Slowly but surely the tangled threads of 
the night’s adventure were unraveling 


THE RIVER’S END 


145 

themselves for Keith. The main facts 
pressed upon him, no longer smothered in 
a chaos of theory and supposition. If 
there had been no Miriam Kirkstone in 
the big house on the hill, Shan Tung 
would have gone to McDowell, and he 
would have been in irons at the present 
moment. McDowell had been right after 
all. Miriam Kirkstone was fighting for 
something that was more than her exist¬ 
ence. The thought of that something ” 
made Keith writhe and his hands clench. 
Shan Tung had triumphed but not utterly. 
A part of the fruit of his triumph was 
still just out of his reach, and the two 
—beautiful Miss Kirkstone and the deadly 
Shan Tung—were locked in a final 
struggle for its possession. In some mys¬ 
terious way he, John Keith, was to play 
the winning hand. How or when he could 
not understand. But of one thing he was 
convinced; in exchange for whatever win¬ 
ning card he held Shan Tung had offered 
him his life. Tomorrow he would expect 
an answer. 

That tomorrow had already dawned. It 
was one o’clock when Keith again looked 


146 THE RIVER’S END 

at his watch. Twenty hours ago he had 
cooked his last camp-fire breakfast. It 
was only eighteen hours ago that he had 
filled himself with the smell of Andy 
Duggan’s bacon, and still more recently 
that he had sat in the little barber shop on 
the corner wondering what his fate would 
be when he faced McDowell. It struck 
him as incongruous and impossible that 
only fifteen hours had passed since then. 
If he possessed a doubt of the reality of 
it all, the bed waf there to help convince 
him. It was a real bed, and he had not 
slept in a real bed for a number of years. 
Wallie had made it ready for him. Its 
sheets were snow-white. There was a 
counterpane with a fringe on it and pillows 
puffed up with billowy invitation, as if 
they were on the point of floating away. 
Had they risen before his eyes, Keith 
would have regarded the phenomenon 
rather casually. After the swift piling 
up of the amazing events of those fifteen 
hours, a floating pillow would have seemed 
quite in the natural orbit of things. But 
they did not float. They remained where 
they were, their white breasts bared to him. 


THE RIVER’S END 


147 

urging upon him a common-sense perspec¬ 
tive of the situation. He wasn’t going to 
run away. He couldn’t sit up all night. 
Therefore why not come to them and 
sleep? 

There was something directly personal 
in the appeal of the pillows and the bed. 
It was not general; it was for him. And 
Keith responded. 

He made another note of the time, a 
half-hour after one, when he turned in. 
He allotted himself four hours of sleep, for 
it was his intention to be up with the sum 


XII 


f^/ECESSITY had made of Keith a 
fairly accurate human chronometer. 
In the second year of his fugitivism he had 
lost his watch. At first it was like losing 
an arm, a part of his brain, a living friend. 
From that time until he came into pos¬ 
session of Conniston’s timepiece he was his 
own hour-glass and his own alarm clock. 
He became proficient. 

Brady’s bed and the Circe-breasted pil¬ 
lows that supported his head were his un¬ 
doing. The morning after Shan Tung’s 
visit he awoke to find the sun flooding in 
through the eastern window of his room. 
The warmth of it as it fell full in his 
face, setting his eyes blinking, told him 
it was too late He guessed it was eight 
o’clock. When he fumbled his watch out 
from under his pillow and looked at it, 
he found it was a quarter past. He got 
up quietly, his mind swiftly aligning itself 
to the happenings of yesterday. He 

148 


THE RIVER’S END 


149 

stretched himself until his muscles 
snapped, and his chest expanded with 
deep breaths of air from the windows he 
had left open when he went to bed. He 
was fit. He was ready for Shan Tung, for 
McDowell. And over this physical readi¬ 
ness there surged the thrill of a glorious 
anticipation. It fairly staggered him to 
discover how badly he wanted to see Mary 
Josephine again. 

He wondered if she was still asleep and 
answered that there was little possibility 
of her being awake—even at eight o’clock. 
Probably she would sleep until noon, the 
poor, tired, little thing! He smiled affec¬ 
tionately into the mirror over Brady’s 
dressing-table. And then the unmistakable 
sound of voices in the outer room took him 
curiously to the door. They were subdued 
voices. He listened hard, and his heart 
pumped faster. One of them v/as Wallie’s 
voice; ihe other was Mary Josephine’s, 

He was amused v/ith himself at the ex¬ 
treme care with which he proceeded to 
dress. It was an entirely new sensation, 
Wallie had provided him with the neces¬ 
saries for a cold sponge and in some mys- 


1^0 THE RIVER’S END 

terious interim since their arrival had 
brushed and pressed the most important of 
Conniston’s things. With the English¬ 
man’s wordrobe he had brought up from 
barracks a small chest which was still 
locked. Until this morning Keith had 
not noticed it. It was less than half as 
large as a steamer trunk and had the ap¬ 
pearance of being intended as a strong 
box rather than a traveling receptacle. It 
was ribbed by four heavy bands of copper, 
and the corners and edges were reinforced 
with the same metal. The lock itself 
seemed to be impregnable to one without 
a key. Conniston’s name was heavily en¬ 
graved on a copper tablet just above the 
lock. 

Keith regarded the chest with swiftly 
growing speculation. It was not a thing one 
would ordinarily possess. It was an object 
which, on the face of it, was intended to 
be inviolate except to its master key, a 
holder of treasure, a guardian of mystery 
and of precious secrets. In the little cabin 
up on the Barren Conniston had said 
rather indifferently, “You may find some^ 
thing among my things down there that 


THE RIVER’S END 


151 

will help you out.” The words flashed 
back to Keith. Had the Englishman, in 
that casual and uncommunicative way of 
his, referred to the contents of this chest? 
Was it not possible that it held for him 
a solution to the mystery that was facing 
him in the presence of Mary Josephine? 
A sense of conviction began to possess him. 
He examined the lock more closely and 
found that with proper tools it could be 
broken. 

He finished dressing and completed his 
toilet by brushing his beard. On account 
of Mary Josephine he found himself re¬ 
garding this hirsute tragedy with a grow¬ 
ing feeling of disgust, in spite of the fact 
that it gave him an appearance rather dis¬ 
tinguished and military. He wanted it 
off. Its chief crime was that it made him 
look older. Besides, it was inclined to be 
reddish. And it must tickle and prick like 
the deuce when— 

He brought himself suddenly to salute 
with an appreciative grin. “ You’re there, 
and you’ve got to stick,” he chuckled. 
After all, he was a likable-looking chap, 
even v/ith that handicap. He was glad. 


152 THE RIVER’S END 

He opened his door so quietly that 
Mary Josephine did not see him at first 
Her back was toward him as she bent over 
the dining-tabie. Her slim little figure 
was dressed in some soft stuff all crinkly 
from packing. Her hair, brown and soft, 
v/as piled up in shining coils on the top 
of her head. For the life of him Keith 
couldn’t keep his eyes from traveling from 
the top of that glowing head to the little 
high-heeled feet on the floor. They were 
adorable, slim little, aristocratic feet with 
dainty ankles! He stood looking at her 
until she turned and caught him. 

There was a change since last night. 
She was older. He could see it now, the 
utter impropriety of his cuddling her up 
like a baby in the big chair—the impossi¬ 
bility, almost. 

Mary Josephine settled his doubt. With 
a happy little cry she ran to him, and Keith 
found her arms about him again and her 
lovely mouth held up to be kissed. He 
hesitated for perhaps the tenth part of 
a second, if hesitation could be counted in 
that space. Then his arms closed about 
her, and he kissed her. He felt the 


THE RIVER’S END 153 

snuggle of her face against his breast 
again, the crush and sweetness of her hair 
against his lips and cheek. He kissed her 
again uninvited. Before he could stop the 
habit, he had kissed her a third time. 

Then her hands were at his face, and he 
saw again that look in her eyes, a deep 
and anxious questioning behind the shim¬ 
mer of love in them, something mute and 
understanding and wonderfully sympa¬ 
thetic, a mothering soul looking at him 
and praying as it looked. If his life had 
paid the forfeit the next instant, he could 
not have helped kissing her a fourth time. 

If Mary Josephine had gone to bed with 
a doubt of his brotherly interest last night, 
the doubt was removed now. Her cheeks 
flushecL Her eyes shone. She was palpi- 
tantly, excitedly happy. It’s you, 

Derry,” she cried. “ Oh, it’s you as you 
used to be!” 

She seized his hand and drew him 
toward the table. Wallie thrust in his 
head from the kitchenette, grinning, and 
Mary Josephine flashed him back a mean¬ 
ing smile. Keith saw in an instant that 
Wallie had turned from his heathen gods 


THE RIVER’S END 


^154 

to the worship of something infinitely more 
beautiful. He no longer looked to Keith 
for instructions. 

Mary Josephine sat down opposite Keith 
at the table. She was telling him, with 
that warm laughter and happiness in her 
eyes, how the sun had wakened her, and 
how she had helped Wallie get breakfast. 
For the first time Keith was looking at her 
from a point of vantage; there was just 
so much distance between them, no more 
and no less, and the light was right. She 
was, to him, exquisite. The little puckery 
lines came into her smooth forehead when 
he apologized for his tardiness by explain¬ 
ing that he had not gone to bed until one 
o’clock. Fler concern wai delightful. She 
scolded him while WaltJ^; brought in the 
breakfast, and inwardly he swelled with 
the irrepressible exultation of a great pos¬ 
sessor. He had never had anyone to scold 
him like that before. It was a scolding 
which expressed Mary Josephine’s im¬ 
mediate proprietorship of him, and he 
wondered if the pleasure of it made him 
look as silly as Wallie. His plans were 
all gone. He had intended to play the 


THE RIVER’S END 155 

idiotic part of one who had partly lost 
his memory, but throughout the breakfast 
he exhibited no sign that he was anything 
but healthfully normal. Mary Josephine’s 
delight at the improvement of his condi¬ 
tion since last night shone in her face and 
eyes, and he could see that she was strictly, 
but with apparent unconsciousness, guard¬ 
ing herself against saying anything that 
mdght bring up the dread shadow between 
them. She had already begun to xight her 
own fight for him, and the thing was so 
beautiful that he wanted to go round to 
her, and get down on his knees, and put 
his head in her lap, and tell her the truth. 

It was in the moment of that thought 
that the look came into his face which 
brought the questioning little lines into her 
forehead again. In that instant she caught 
a glimpse of the hunted man, of the soul 
that had traded itself, of desire beaten into 
helplessness by a thing she would never 
understand. It was gone swiftly, but she 
had caught it. And for her the scar just 
under his hair stood for its meaning. The 
responsive throb in her breast was electric. 
He felt it, saw it, sensed it to the depth of 


156 THE RIVER’S END 

his soul, and his faith in himself stood 
challenged. She believed. And he—^was 
a liar. Yet what a wonderful thing to lie 
for! 

—He called me up over the telephone, 
and when I told him to be quiet, that you 
were still asleep, I think he must have 
sworn—it sounded like it, but I couldn’t 
hear distinctly—and then he fairly roared 
at me to wake you up and tell you that you 
didn’t half deserve such a lovely little 
sister as I am. Wasn’t that nice, Derry? ” 

^‘You—you’re talking about Mc¬ 

Dowell? ” 

To be sure I am talking about Mr. 
McDowell! And when I told him your 
injury troubled you more than usual, and 
that I was glad you were resting, I think 
I heard him swallow hard. He thinks a 
lot of you, Derry. And then he asked me 
which injury it was that hurt you, and I 
told him the one in the head. What did 
he mean? Were you hurt somewhere else, 
Derry? ” 

Keith swallowed hard, too. “ Not to 
speak of,” he said. You see, Mary Jose¬ 
phine, I’ve got a tremendous surprise for 


THE RIVER’S END 157 

you, if you’ll promise it won’t spoil your 
appetite. Last night was the first night 
I’ve spent in a real bed for three years.” 

And then, without waiting for her ques¬ 
tions, he began to tell her the epic story of 
John Keith. With her sitting opposite 
him, her beautiful, wide-open, gray eyes 
looking at him with amazement as she 
sensed the marvelous coincidence of their 
meeting, he told it as he had not told it to 
McDowell or even to Miriam Kirkstone. 
A third time the facts were the same. But 
it was John Keith now who was telling 
John Keith’s story through the lips of an 
unreal and negative Conniston. He for¬ 
got his own breakfast, and a look of gloom 
settled on Wallie’s face when he peered in 
through the door and saw that their cofiee 
and toast were growing cold. Mary Jose¬ 
phine leaned a little over the table. Not 
once did she interrupt Keith. Never had 
he dreamed of a glory that might reflect 
his emotions as did her eyes. As he 
swept from pathos to storm, from the mad¬ 
ness of long, black nights to starvation and 
cold, as he told of flight, of pursuit, of 
the merciless struggle that ended at last 


1^8 THE RIVER’S END 

in the capture of John Keith, as he gave 
to these things Vv^ords and life pulsing with 
the beat of his own heart, he saw them 
revisioned in those wonderful gray eyes, 
cold at times with fear, warm and glow¬ 
ing at other times with sympathy, and 
again shining softly with a glory of pride 
and love that was meant for him alone. 
With him she was present in the little 
cabin up in the big Barren. Until he told 
of those days and nights of hopeless deso¬ 
lation, of racking cough and the nearness 
of death, and of the comradeship of 
brothers that had come as a final benedic¬ 
tion to the hunter and the hunted, until in 
her soul she was understanding and living 
those terrible hours as they two had lived 
them, he did not know how deep and dark 
and immeasurably tender that gray mys¬ 
tery of beauty in her eyes could be. From 
that hour he worshiped them as he wor¬ 
shiped no other part of her. 

“ And from all that you came back the 
same day I came,” she said in a low, awed 
voice. “You came back from that!^' 

He remembered the part he must play. 
“Yes, three years of it. If I could only 


THE RIVER’S END 1159 

remember as well, only half as well, things 

that happened before this-” He raised 

a hand to his forehead, to the scar. 

You will,” she whispered swiftly. 

Derry, darling, you will! ” 

Wallie sidled in and, with an adoring 
grin at Mary Josephine, suggested that he 
had more coffee and toast ready to serve, 
piping hot. Keith was relieved. The day 
had begun auspiciously, and over the bacon 
and eggs, done to a ravishing brown by 
the little Jap, he told Mary Josephine of 
some of his bills of fare in the north and 
how yesterday he had filled up on bacon 
smell at Andy Duggan’s. Steak from the 
cheek of a walrus, he told her, was equal 
to porterhouse; seal meat wasn’t bad, but 
one grew tired of it quickly unless he was 
an Eskimo; polar bear meat was filling but 
tough and strong. He liked whale meat, 
especially the tail-steaks of narwhal, and 
cold boiled blubber was good in the winter, 
only it was impossible to cook it because 
of lack of fuel, unless one was aboard ship 
or had an alcohol stove in his outfit. The 
tidbit of the Eskimo was birds’-eggs, gath¬ 
ered by the ton in summer-time, rotten be- 



[i6o THE RIVER’S END 

fore cold weather came, and frozen solid 
as chunks of ice in winter. Through one 
starvation period of three weeks he had 
lived on them himself, crunching them raw 
in his mouth as one worries away with a 
piece of rock candy. The little lines gath¬ 
ered in Mary Josephine’s forehead at this, 
but they smoothed away into laughter 
when he humorously described the joy of 
living on nothing at all but air. And he 
added to this by telling her how the glut¬ 
tonous Eskimo at feast-time would lie out 
flat on their backs so that their women¬ 
folk could feed them by dropping chunks 
of flesh into their open maws until their 
stomachs swelled up like the crops of birds 
overstuffed with grain. 

It was a successful breakfast. When it 
was over, Keith felt that he had achieved 
a great deal. Before they rose from the 
table, he startled Mary Josephine by order¬ 
ing Wallie to bring him a cold chisel and 
a hammer from Brady’s tool-chest. 

“ I’ve lost the key that opens my chest, 
and I’ve got to break in,” he explained to 
her. 

Mary Josephine’s little laugh was deli- 


THE RIVER’S END i6i 

cious. After what you told me about 
frozen eggs, I thought perhaps you were 
going to eat some,” she said. 

She linked her arm in his as they walked 
into the big room, snuggling her head 
against his shoulder so that, leaning over, 
his lips were buried in one of the soft, 
shining coils of her hair. And she was 
making plans, enumerating them on the 
tips of her fingers. If he had business out¬ 
side, she was going with him. Wherever 
he went she was going. There was no 
doubt in her mind about that. She called 
his attention to a trunk that had arrived 
while he slept, and assured him she would 
be ready for outdoors by the time he had 
opened his chest. She had a little blue 
suit she was going to wear. And her hair? 
Did it look good enough for his friends to 
see? She had put it up in a hurry. 

It is beautiful, glorious,” he said. 

Her face pinked under the ardency of 
his gaze. She put a finger to the tip of 
his nose, laughing at him. Why, Derry, 
if you weren’t my brother I’d think you 
were my lover! You said that as though 
you meant it terribly much. Do you?’^ 


THE RIVER’S END 


162 

He felt a sudden dull stab of pain. 
^‘Yes, I mean it. It’s glorious. And so 
are you, Mary Josephine, every bit of 
you.” 

On tiptoe she gave him the warm sweet¬ 
ness of her lips again. And then she ran 
away from him, joy and laughter in her 
face, and disappeared into her room. 
“You must hurry or I shall beat you,’^ 
she called back to him. 


XIII 


I N his own room, with the door closed 
and locked, Keith felt again that dull, 
strange pain that made his heart sick and 
the air about him difficult to breathe. 

If you weren^t my brother/^ 

The words beat in his brain. They were 
pounding at his heart until it was smoth¬ 
ered, laughing at him and taunting him 
and triumphing over him just as, many 
times before, the raving voices of the 
weird wind-devils had scourged him from 
out of black night and arctic storm. Her 
brother! His hand clenched until the nails 
bit into his flesh. No, he hadn’t thought 
of that part of the fight! And now it 
swept upon him in a deluge. If he lost in 
the fight that was ahead of him, his life 
would pay the forfeit. The law would 
take him, and he would hang. And if he 
won—she would be his sister forever and 
to the end of all time! Just that, and no 

163 


164 THE RIVER’S END 

more. His sister! And the agony of 
truth gripped him that it was not as a 
brother that he saw the glory in her hair, 
the glory in her eyes and face, and the 
glory in her slim little, beautiful body— 
but as the lover. A merciless preordina¬ 
tion had stacked the cards against him 
again. He was Conniston, and she v/as 
Conniston’s sister. 

A strong man, a man in whom blood ran 
red, there leaped up in him for a moment a 
sudden and unreasoning rage at that thing 
which he had called fate. He saw the un¬ 
fairness of it all, the hopelesmess of it,f 
the cowardly subterfuge and trickery of 
life itself as it had played against him, and 
with tightly set lips and clenched hands he 
called mutely on God Almighty to play the 
game square. Give him a chance! Give 
him just one square deal, only one; let him 
see a way, let him fight a man’s fight with 
a ray of hope ahead! In these red mo¬ 
ments hope emblazoned itself before his 
eyes as a monstrous lie. Bitterness rose in 
him until he was drunk with it, and 
blasphemy filled his heart. Whichever 
way he turned, however hard he fought, 



THE RIVER’S END i6^ 

there was no chance of winning. From 
the day he killed Kirkstone the cards had 
been stacked against him, and they were 
stacked now and would be stacked until 
the end. He had believed in God, he had 
believed in the inevitable ethics of the 
final reckoning of things, and he had 
believed strongly that an impersonal Some¬ 
thing more powerful than man-made will 
was behind him in his struggles. These 
beliefs were smashed now. Toward them 
he felt the impulse of a maddened beast 
trampling hated things under foot. They 
stood for lies—treachery—cheating—yes, 
contemptible cheating! It was impossible 
for him to win. However he played, 
whichever way he turned, he must lose. 
For he was Conniston, and she was Con- 
niston’s sister, and must be to the end of 
time. 

Faintly, beyond the door, he heard Mary 
Josephine singing. Like a bit of steel 
drawn to a tension his normal self snapped 
back into place. His readjustment came 
with a lurch, a subtle sort of shock. His 
hands unclenched, the tense lines in his 
face relaxed, and because that God Al- 


THE RIVER’S END 


166 

mighty he had challenged had given to 
him an unquenchable humor, he saw an¬ 
other thing where only smirking ghouls 
and hypocrites had rent his brain with 
their fiendish exultations a moment before. 
It was Conniston’s face, suave, smiling, 
dying, triumphant over life, and Connis- 
ton was saying, just as he had said up there 
in the cabin on the Barren, with death 
reaching out a hand for him, “ It’s queer, 
old top, devilish queer—and funny!” 

Yes, it was funny if one looked at it 
right, and Keith found himself swinging 
back into his old view-point. It was the 
hugest joke life had ever played on him. 
His sister! He could fancy Conniston 
twisting his mustaches, his cool eyes glim¬ 
mering with silent laughter, looking on his 
predicament, and he could fancy Connis¬ 
ton saying, “ It’s funny, old top, devilish 
funny—but it’ll be funnier still when some 
other man comes along and carries her 
off!” 

And he, John Keith, would have to 
grin and bear it because he was her 
brother! 

Mary Josephine was tapping at his door. 


THE RIVER’S END 167 

“ Derwent Conniston,” she called frigidly, 

there’s a female person on the telephone 
asking for you. What shall I say? ” 

“ Er—^why—tell her you’re my sister, 
Mary Josephine, and if it’s Miss Kirkstone, 
be nice to her and say I’m not able to 
come to the ’phone, and that you’re looking 
forward to meeting her, and that we’ll be 
up to see her some time today.” 

Oh, indeed!” 

“ You see,” said Keith, his mouth close 
to the door, you see, this Miss Kirk¬ 
stone-” 

But Mary Josephine was gone. 

Keith grinned. His illimitable optimism 
was returning. Sufficient for the day that 
she was there, that she loved him, that she 
belonged to him, that just now he was the 
arbiter of her destiny! Far off in the 
mountains he dreamed of, alone, just they 
two, what might not happen? Some 
day- 

With the cold chisel and the hammer he 
went to the chest. His task was one that 
numbed his hands before the last of the 
three locks was broken. He dragged the 
chest more into the light and opened it. 




i68 THE RIVER’S END 

He was disappointed. At first glance he 
could not understand why Conniston had 
locked it at all. It was almost empty, so 
nearly empty that he could see the bottom 
of it, and the first object that met his eyes 
was an insult to his expectations—an old 
sock with a huge hole in the toe of it. 
Under the sock was an old fur cap not of 
the kind worn north of Montreal. There 
was a chain with a dog-collar attached to 
it, a hip-pocket pistol and a huge forty- 
five, and not less than a hundred cartridges 
of indiscriminate calibers scattered loosely 
about. At one end, bundled in carelessly, 
was a pair of riding-breeches, and under 
the breeches a pair of white shoes with 
rubber soles. There was neither sentiment 
nor reason to the collection in the chest. 
It was junk. Even the big forty-five had a 
broken hammer, and the pistol, Keith 
thought, might have stunned a fly at close 
range. He pawed the things over with 
the cold chisel, and the last thing he came 
upon—buried under what looked like a 
cast-off sport shirt—was a pasteboard shoe 
box. He raised the cover. The box was 
full of papers. 


THE RIVER’S END 169 

Here was promise. He transported the 
box to Brady’s table and sat down. He 
examined the larger papers first. There 
were a couple of old game licenses for 
Manitoba, half a dozen pencil-marked 
maps, chiefly of the Peace River country, 
and a number of letters from the secre¬ 
taries of Boards of Trade pointing out the 
incomparable possibilities their respective 
districts held for the homesteader and the 
buyer of land. Last of all came a number 
of newspaper clippings and a packet of 
letters. 

Because they were loose he seized upon 
the clippings first, and as his eyes fell upon 
the first paragraph of the first clipping his 
body became suddenly tensed in the shock 
of unexpected discovery and amazed inter¬ 
est. There were six of the clippings, all 
from English papers, English in their 
terseness, brief as stock exchange reports, 
and equally to the point. He read the six 
in three minutes. 

They simply stated that Derwent Con- 
niston, of the Connistons of Darlington, 
was wanted for burglary—and that up to 
date he had not been found. 


170 THE RIVER’S END 

Keith gave a gasp of incredulity. He 
looked again to see that his eyes were not 
tricking him. And it was there in cold, 
implacable print. 

Derwent Conniston—that phoenix among 
men, by whom he had come to measure all 
other men, that Crichton of nerve, of calm 
and audacious courage, of splendid poise 
—a burglar! It was cheap, farcical, an 
impossible absurdity. Had it been murder, 
high treason, defiance of some great law, a 
great crime inspired by a great passion or 
a great ideal, but it was burglary, brigan¬ 
dage of the cheapest and most common¬ 
place variety, a sneaking night-coward’s 
plagiarism of real adventure and real 
crime. It was impossible. Keith gritted 
the words aloud. He might have accepted 
Conniston as a Dick Turpin, a Claude 
Duval or a Macheath, but not as a Jeremy 
Diddler or a Bill Sykes. The printed lines 
were lies. They must be. Derwent Con¬ 
niston might have killed a dozen men, but 
he had never cracked a safe. To think it 
was to think the inconceivable. 

He turned to the letters. They were 
postmarked Darlington, England. His 


THE RIVER’S END 


171 

fingers tingled as he opened the first. It 
was as he had expected, as he had hoped. 
They were from Mary Josephine. He ar¬ 
ranged them—nine in all—in the sequence 
of their dates, which ran back nearly eigh^t 
years. All of them had been written 
within a period of eleven months. They 
were as legible as print. And as he passed 
from the first to the second, and from the 
second to the third, and then read on 
into the others, he forgot there was such 
a thing as time and that Mary Josephine 
was waiting for him. The clippings had 
told him one thing; here, like bits of 
driftage to be put together, a line in this 
place and half a dozen in that, in para¬ 
graphs that enlightened and in others that 
puzzled, was the other side of the story, a 
growing thing that rose up out of mystery 
and doubt in segments and fractions of 
segments adding themselves together piece¬ 
meal, welding the whole into form and 
substance, until there rode through Keith’s 
veins a wild thrill of exultation and 
triumph. 

And then he came to the ninth and 
last letter. It was in a different hand- 


THE RIVER’S END 


172 

writing, brief, with a deadly specificness 
about it that gripped Keith as he read. 

This ninth letter he held in his hand as 
he rose from the table, and out of his 
mouth there fell, unconsciously, Connis- 
ton’s own words, “ It’s devilish queer, old 
top—and funny! ” 

There was no humor in the way he 
spoke them. His voice was hard, his eyes 
dully ablaze. He was looking back into 
that swirling, unutterable loneliness of the 
northland, and he was seeing Conniston 
again. 

Fiercely he caught up the clippings, 
struck a match, and with a grim smile 
watched them as they curled up into 
flame and crumbled into ash. What a lie 
was life, what a malformed thing was 
justice, what a monster of iniquity the 
man-fabricated thing called law! 

And again he found himself speaking, 
as if the dead Englishman himself were 
repeating the words, “ It’s devilish queer, 
old top—and funny!” 


XIV 


QUARTER of an hour latec, with 



/IL Mary Josephine at his side, he was 
walking down the green slope toward the 
Saskatchewan. In that direction lay the 
rims of timber, the shimmering valley, and 
the broad pathways that opened into the 
plains beyond. 

The town was at their backs, and Keith 
wanted it there. He wanted to keep 
McDowell, and Shan Tung, and Miriam 
Kirkstone as far away as possible, until his 
mind rode more smoothly in the new orbit 
in which it was still whirling a bit un¬ 
steadily. More than all else he wanted 
to be alone with Mary Josephine, to make 
sure of her, to convince himself utterly 
that she was his to go on fighting for. 
He sensed the nearness and the magnitude 
of the impending drama. He knew that 
today he must face Shan Tung, that again 
he must go under the battery of Mc¬ 
Dowell’s eyes and brain, and that like a 


THE RIVER’S END 


174 

fish in treacherous waters he must swim 
cleverly to avoid the nets that would en¬ 
tangle and destroy him. Today was the 
day—the stage was set, the curtain about 
to be lifted, the play ready to be enacted. 
But before it was the prologue. And the 
prologue was Mary Josephine’s. 

At the crest of a dip halfway down the 
slope they had paused, and in this pause he 
stood a half-step behind her so that he 
could look at her for a moment without 
being observed. She was bareheaded, and 
it came upon him all at once how wonder¬ 
ful was a woman’s hair, how beautiful be¬ 
yond all other things beautiful and de¬ 
sirable. In twisted, glowing seductiveness 
it was piled up on Mary Josephine’s head, 
transformed into brown and gold glories 
by the sun. He wanted to put forth his 
hand to it, and bury his fingers in it, and 
feel the thrill and the warmth and the 
crush of the palpitant life of it against his 
own flesh. And then, bending a little for¬ 
ward, he saw under her long lashes the 
sheer joy of life shining in her eyes as she 
drank in the wonderful panorama that 
lay below them to the west. Last night’s 


THE RIVER’S END 175 

rain had freshened it, the sun glorified it 
now, and the fragrance of earthy smells 
that rose up to them from it was the unde¬ 
filed breath of a thing living and awake. 
Even to Keith the river had never looked 
more beautiful, and never had his yearn¬ 
ings gone out to it more strongly than in 
this moment, to the river and beyond—and 
to the back of beyond, where the moun¬ 
tains rose up to meet the blue sky and the 
river itself was born. And he heard Mary 
Josephine’s voice, joyously suppressed, ex¬ 
claiming softly, 

^^Oh, Derry!” 

His heart was filled with gladness. She, 
too, was seeing what his eyes saw in that 
wonderland. And she was feeling it. Her 
hand, seeking his hand, crept into his palm, 
and the fingers of it clung to his fingers. 
He could feel the thrill of the miracle 
passing through her, the miracle of the 
open spaces, the miracle of the forests ris¬ 
ing billow on billow to the purple mists 
of the horizon, the miracle of the golden 
Saskatchewan rolling slowly and peace¬ 
fully in its slumbering sheen out of that 
mighty mysteryland that reached to the 


176 THE RIVER’S END 

lap of the setting sun. He spoke to her 
of that land as she looked, wide-eyed, 
quick-breathing, her fingers closing still 
more tightly about his. This was but the 
beginning of the glory of the west and the 
north, he told her. Beyond that low hori¬ 
zon, where the tree tops touched the sky 
were the prairies—not the tiresome monot¬ 
ony which she had seen from the car 
windows, but the wide, glorious, God-given 
country of the Northwest with its thou¬ 
sands of lakes and rivers and its tens of 
thousands of square miles of forests; and 
beyond those things, still farther, were the 
foothills, and beyond the foothills the 
mountains. And in those mountains the 
river down there had its beginning. 

She looked up swiftly, her eyes brim¬ 
ming with the golden flash of the sun. 
“It is wonderful! And just over there 
is the town 1 ” 

“ Yes, and beyond the town are the 
cities.” 

“ And ofi there-” 

“ God’s country,” said Keith devoutly. 

Mary Josephine drew a deep breath. 
“ And people still live in towns and 



THE RIVER’S END 


177 

cities!” she exclaimed in wondering 
credulity. “ I’ve dreamed of ^ over here,’ 
Derry, but I never dreamed that. And 
you’ve had it for years and years, while 
I—oh, Derry!” 

And again those two words filled his 
heart with gladness, words of loving re¬ 
proach, atremble with the mysterious whis¬ 
per of a great desire. For she was looking 
into the west. And her eyes and her heart 
and her soul were in the west, and sud¬ 
denly Keith saw his way as though lighted 
by a flaming torch. He came near to for¬ 
getting that he was Conniston. He spoke 
of his dream, his desire, and told her that 
last night—before she came—he had made 
up his mind to go. She had come to him 
just in time. A little later and he would 
have been gone, buried utterly away from 
the world in the wonderland of the moun¬ 
tains. And now they would go together. 
They would go as he had planned to go, 
quietly, unobtrusively; they would slip 
away and disappear. There was a reason 
why no one should know, not even Mc¬ 
Dowell. It must be their secret. Some 
day he would tell her why. Her heart 


178 THE RIVER’S END 

thumped excitedly as he went on like a 
boy planning a wonderful day. He could 
see the swifter beat of it in the flush that 
rose into her face and the joy glowing 
tremulously in her eyes as she looked at 
him. They would get ready quietly. 
They might go tomorrow, the next day, 
any time. It would be a glorious adven¬ 
ture, just they two, with all the vastness of 
that mountain paradise ahead of them. 

“We’ll be pals,” he said. “Just you 
and me, Mary Josephine. We’re all that’s 
left.” 

It was his first experiment, his first refer¬ 
ence to the information he had gained in 
the letters, and swift as a flash Mary Jose¬ 
phine’s eyes turned up to him. He nodded, 
smiling. He understood their quick ques- 
tionkig, and he held her hand closer and 
began to walk with her down the slope. 

“ A lot of it came back last night and 
this morning, a lot of it,” he explained. 
“ It’s queer what miracles small things can 
work sometimes, isn’t it? Think what a 
grain of sand can do to a watch! This 
was one of the small things.” He was 
still smiling as he touched the scar on 


THE RIVER’S END 179 

his forehead. “ And you, you were the 
other miracle. And I’m remembering. It 
doesn’t seem like seven or eight years, but 
only yesterday, that the grain of sand got 
mixed up somewhere in the machinery in 
my head. And I guess there was another 
reason for my going wrong. You’ll under¬ 
stand, when I tell you.” 

Had he been Conniston it could not have 
come from him more naturally, more sin¬ 
cerely. He was living the great lie, and 
yet to him it was no longer a lie. He did 
not hesitate, as shame and conscience might 
have made him hesitate. He was fighting 
that something beautiful might be raised 
up out of chaos and despair and be made 
to exist; he was fighting for life in place 
of death, for happiness in place of grief, 
for light in place of darkness—fighting to 
save where others would destroy. There¬ 
fore the great lie was not a lie but a thing 
without venom or hurt, an instrument for 
happiness and for all the things good and 
beautiful that went to make happiness. It 
was his one great weapon. Without it he 
would fail, and failure meant desolation. 
So he spoke convincingly, for what he 


ii8o THE RIVER’S END 

said came straight from the heart though 
it was born in the shadow of that one 
master-falsehood. His wonder was that 
Mary Josephine believed him so utterly 
that not for an instant was there a ques¬ 
tioning doubt in her eyes or on her lips. 

Ele told her how much he “ remem¬ 
bered,” which was no more and no less 
than he had learned from the letters and 
the clippings. The story did not appeal 
to him as particularly unusual or dramatic. 
He had passed through too many tragic 
happenings in the last four years to regard 
it in that way. It was simply an unfor¬ 
tunate affair beginning in misfortune, and 
with its necessary whirlwind of hurt and 
sorrow. The one thing of shame he would 
not keep out of his mind was that he, 
Derwent Conniston, must have been a poor 
type of big brother in those days of nine 
or ten years ago, even though little Mary 
Josephine had worshiped him. He was 
well along in his twenties then. The Con- 
nistons of Darlington were his uncle and 
aunt, and his uncle was a more or less 
prominent figure in ship-building interests 
on the Clyde. With these people the three 


THE RIVER’S END i8i 

i—himself, Mary Josephine, and his 
brother Egbert—had lived, “ farmed out ” 
to a hard-necked, flinty-hearted pair of 
relatives because of a brother’s stipulation 
and a certain English law. With them 
they had existed in mutual discontent and 
dislike. Derwent, when he became old 
enough, had stepped over the traces. All 
this Keith had gathered from the letters, 
but there was a great deal that was miss¬ 
ing. Egbert, he gathered, must have been 
a scapegrace. He was a cripple of some 
sort and seven or eight years his junior. 
In the letters Mary Josephine had spoken 
of him as “ poor Egbert,” pitying instead 
of condemning him, though it was Egbert 
who had brought tragedy and separation 
upon them. One night Egbert had broken 
open the Conniston safe and in the dark¬ 
ness had had a fight and a narrow escape 
from his uncle, who laid the crime upon 
Derwent. And Derwent, in whom Egbert 
must have confided, had fled to America 
that the cripple might be saved, with the 
promise that some day he would send for 
Mary Josephine. He was followed by the 
uncle’s threat that if he ever returned to 


182 THE RIVER’S END 

England, he would be jailed. Not long 
afterward “ poor Egbert ” was found dead 
in bed, fearfully contorted. Keith guessed 
there had been something mentally as well 
as physically wrong with him. 

‘‘—And I was going to send for you,” 
he said, as they came to the level of the 
valley. My plans were made, and I was 
going to send for you, when this came.” 

He stopped, and in a few tense, breath¬ 
less moments Mary Josephine read the 
ninth and last letter he had taken from the 
Englishman’s chest. 

It was from her uncle. In a dozen lines 
it stated that she, Mary Josephine, was 
dead, and it reiterated the threat against 
Derwent Conniston should he ever dare to 
return to England. 

A choking cry came to her lips. “ And 
that —that was it? ” 

“ Yes, that—and the hurt in my head,” 
he said, remembering the part he must 
play. They came at about the same time, 
and the two of them must have put the 
grain of sand in my brain.” 

It was hard to lie now, looking straight 
into her face that had gone suddenly white, 


THE RIVER’S END 183^ 

and with her wonderful eyes burning deep 
into his soul. 

She did not seem, for an instant, to hear 
his voice or sense his words. I under¬ 
stand now,” she was saying, the letter 
crumpling in her fingers. “ I was sick for 
almost a year, Derry. They thought I was 
going to die. He must have written it 
then, and they destroyed my letters to you, 
and when I was better they told me you 
were dead, and then I didn’t write any 
more. And I wanted to die. And then, 
almost a year ago. Colonel Reppington 
came to me, and his dear old voice was so 
excited that it trembled, and he told me 
that he believed you were alive. A friend 
of his had just returned from British 
Columbia, and this friend told him that 
three years before, while on a grizzly 
shooting trip, he had met a man named 
Conniston, an Englishman. We wrote a 
hundred letters up there and found the 
man. Jack Otto, who was in the moun¬ 
tains with you, and then I knew you were 
alive. But we couldn’t find you after that, 
and so I came-” 

He would have wagered that she was 



184 THE RIVER’S END 

going to cry, but she fought the tears back, 
smiling. 

And—and I’ve found you!” she fin¬ 
ished triumphantly. 

She snuggled close to him, and he 
slipped an arm about her waist, and they 
walked on. She told him about her ar¬ 
rival in Halifax, how Colonel Reppington 
had given her letters to nice people in 
Montreal and Winnipeg, and how it hap¬ 
pened one day that she found his name in 
one of the Mounted Police blue books, and 
after that came on as fast as she could to 
surprise him at Prince Albert. When she 
came to that point, Keith pointed once 
more into the west and said: 

And there is our new world. Let us 
forget the old. Shall we, Mary Jose¬ 
phine? ” 

Yes,” she whispered, and her hand 
sought his again and crept into it, warm 
and confident. 


XV 


HEY went on through the golden 



JL morning, the earth damp under their 
feet, the air filled with its sweet incense, 
on past scattered clumps of balsams and 
cedars until they came to the river and 
looked down on its yellow sand-bars glis¬ 
tening in the sun. The town w^as hidden, 
''"hey heard no sound from it. And look' 
ing up the great Saskatchewan, the river 
of i)^slery, of romance, of glamour, they 
saw before them, where the spruce walls 
seemed to meet, the wide-open door through 
which they might pass into the western 
land beyond. Keith pointed it out. And 
he pointed out the yellow bars, the glisten¬ 
ing shores of sand, and told her how 
even as far as this, a thousand miles by 
river—those sands brought gold with them 
from the mountains, the gold whose 
treasure-house no man had ever found, and 
which must be hidden up there somewhere 
near the river’s end. His dream, like 


THE RIVER’S END 


186 

Duggan’s, had been to find it Now they 
would search for it together. 

Slowly he was picking his way so that 
at last they came to the bit of cleared 
timber in which was his old home. His 
heart choked him as they drew near. 
There was an uncomfortable tightness in 
his breath. The timber was no longer 
“ clear.” In four years younger genera¬ 
tions of life had sprung up among the 
trees, and the place was jungle-ridden. 
They were within a few yards of the 
house before Mary Josephine saw it, and 
then she stopped suddenly with a little 
gasp. For this that she faced was not 
desertion, was not mere neglect. It was 
tragedy. She saw in an instant that there 
was no life in this place, and yet it stood 
as if tenanted. It was a log chateau with 
a great, red chimney rising at one end. 
Curtains and shades still hung at the 
windows. There were three chairs on the 
broad veranda that looked riverward. But 
two of the windows were broken, and the 
chairs were failing into ruin. There was 
no life. They were facing only the ghosts 
of life. 


THE RIVER’S END 


187 

A swift glance into Keith’s face told her 
this was so. His lips were set tight. There 
was a strange look in his face. Hand in 
hand they had come up, and her fingers 
pressed his tighter now. 

What is it? ” she asked. 

“ It is John Keith’s home as he left it 
four years ago,” he replied. 

The suspicious break in his voice drew 
her eyes from the chateau to his own again. 
She could see him fighting. There wau a 
twitching in his throat. His hand was 
gripping hers until it hurt. 

‘‘John Keith?” she whispered softly. 

“ Yes, John Keith.” 

She inclined her head so that it rested 
lightly and affectionately against his axm. 
“ You must have thought a great deal of 
him, Derry.” 

“ Yes.” 

He freed her hand, and his fists clenched 
convulsively. She could feel the cording 
of the muscles in his arm, his face was 
white, and in his eyes was a fixed stare 
that startled her. He fumbled in a pocket 
and drew out a key. 

“ I promised, when he died, that I 


188 THE RIVER’S END 

would go in and take a last look for him,” 
he said. “ He loved this place. Do you 
want to go with me? ” 

She drew a deep breath. “ Yes.” 

The key opened the door that entered on 
the veranda. As it swung back, grating on 
its rusty hinges, they found themselves fac¬ 
ing the chill of a cold and lifeless air. 
Keith stepped inside. A glance told him 
that nothing was changed—everything 'was 
there in that room with the big fireplace, 
even as he had left it the night he set out 
fo force justice from Judge Kirkstone. 
One thing startled him. On the dust- 
covered table was a bowl and a spoon. He 
remembered vividly how he had eaten his 
supper that night of bread and milk. It 
was the littleness of the thing, the sim¬ 
plicity of it, that shocked him. The bowl 
and spoon were still there after four years. 
He did not reflect that they were as im¬ 
perishable as all the other things about; 
the miracle was that they were there on 
the table, as though he had used them only 
yesterday. The most trivial things in the 
room struck him deepest, and he found 


THE RIVER’S END 189 

himself fighting hard, for a moment, to 
keep his nerve. 

‘‘ He told me about the bowl and the 
spoon, John Keith did,” he said, nodding 
toward them. He told me just what I’d 
find here, even to that. You see, he loved 
the place greatly and everything that was 
in it. It was impossible for him to forget 
even the bowl and the spoon and where he 
had left them.” 

It was easier after that. The old home 
was whispering back its memories to him, 
and he told them to Mary Josephine as 
they went slowly from room to room, until 
John Keith was living there before her 
again, the John Keith whom Derwent 
Conniston had run to his death. It was 
this thing that gripped her, and at last 
what was in her mind found voice. 

‘‘ It wasn’t you who made him die, was 
it, Derry? It wasn’t you? ” 

‘‘ No. It was the law. He died, as I 
told you, of a frosted lung. At the last I 
would have shared my life with him had it 
been possible. McDowell must never 
know that. You m.ust never speak of 
John Keith before him.” 


THE RIVER’S END 


[190 

I—I understand, Derry.” 

And he must not know that we came 
here. To him John Keith was a murderer 
whom it was his duty to hang.” 

She was looking at him strangely. 
Never had he seen her look at him in that 
way. 

“ Derry,” she whispered. 

Yes?” 

‘‘ Derry, is John Keith alive? 

He started. The shock of the question 
was in his face. He caught himself, but 
it was too late. And in an instant her hand 
was at his mouth, and she was whispering 
eagerly, almost fiercely: 

‘^No, no, no—don’t answer me, Derry! 
Don^t answer me! I know, and I under¬ 
stand, and I’m glad, glad, glad! He’s 
alive, and it was you who let him live, 
the big, glorious brother I’m proud of! 
And everyone else thinks he’s dead. But 
don’t answer me, Derry, don’t answer 
me! ” 

She was trembling against him. His 
arms closed about her, and he held her 
nearer to his heart, and longer, than he 
had ever held her before. He kissed her 


THE RIVER’S END 


191 

hair many times, and her lips once, and 
up about his nexk her arms twined softly, 
and a great brightness was in her eyes. 

“ I understand,” she whispered again. 
“ I understand.” 

^‘And I—I must answer you,” he said. 
“ I must answer you, because I love you, 
and because you must know. .Yes, John 
Keith is alive! ” 


XVI 


N hour later, alone and heading for 



jr\. the inspector’s office, Keith felt in 
battle trim. His head was fairly singing 
with the success of the morning. Since the 
opening of Conniston’s chest many things 
had happened, and he was no longer fac¬ 
ing a blank wall of mystery. His chief 
cause of exhilaration was Mary Josephine. 
S^he wanted to go away with him. She 
wanted to go with him anywhere, every¬ 
where, as long as they were together. 
When she had learned that his term of 
enlistment w^as about to expire and that if 
he remained in the Service he would be 
away from her a great deal, she had 
pleaded with him not to reenlist. She did 
not question him when he told her that it 
might be necessary to go away very sud¬ 
denly, without letting another soul know 
of their movements, not even Wallie. In¬ 
tuitively she guessed that the reason had 
something to do with John Keith, for he 


THE RIVER’S END 


193 

had let the fear grow in her that Mc¬ 
Dowell might discover he had been a 
traitor to the Service, in which event the 
Law itself would take him away from her 
for a considerable number of years. And 
with that fear she was more than ever 
eager for the adventure, and planned with 
him for its consummation. 

Another thing cheered Keith. He was 
no longer the absolute liar of yesterday, for 
by a fortunate chance he had been able to 
tell her that John Keith was alive. This 
most important of all truths he had con¬ 
fided to her, and the confession had 
roused in her a comradeship that had 
proclaimed itself ready to fight for him 
or run away with him. Not for an in¬ 
stant had she regretted the action he had 
taken in giving Keith his freedom. He 
was peculiarly happy because of that. She 
was glad John Keith was alive. 

And now that she knew the story of the 
old home down in the clump of timber and 
of the man who had lived there, she was 
anxious to meet Miriam Kirkstone, daugh¬ 
ter of the man he had killed. Keith had 
promised her they would go up that after- 


194 the RIVER’S END 

noon. Within himself he knew that he was 
not sure of keeping the promise. There was 
much to do in the next few hours, and 
much might happen. In fact there was 
but little speculation about it. This was 
the big day. Just what it held for him he 
could not be sure until he saw Shan Tung. 
Any instant might see him put to the final 
test. 

Cruze was pacing slowly up and down 
the hall when Keith entered the building 
in which McDowell had his ofSces. The 
young secretary’s face bore a perplexed 
and rather anxious expression. His hands 
were buried deep in his trousers pockets, 
and he was puffing a cigarette. At Keith’s 
appearance he brightened up a bit. 

Don’t know what to make of the 
governor this morning, by Jove I don’t!” 
he explained, nodding toward the closed 
doors. “ I’ve got instructions to let no one 
near him except you. You may go in.” 

“What seems to be the matter?” Keith 
felt out cautiously. 

Cruze shrugged his thin shoulders, 
flipped the ash from his cigarette, and 
with a grimace said, “ Shan Tung.” 


THE RIVER’S END 


^95 

Shan Tung? ” Keith spoke the nan?e in 
a sibilant whisper. Every nerve in him 
had jumped, and for an instant he thought 
he had betrayed himself. Shan Tung had 
been there early. And now McDowell 
was waiting for him and had given in¬ 
structions that no other should be ad¬ 
mitted. If the Chinaman had exposed 
him, why hadn’t McDowell sent officers up 
to the Shack? That was the first question 
that jumped into his head. The answer 
came as quickly—McDowell had not sent 
officers because, hating Shan Tung, he had 
not believed his story. But he was wait¬ 
ing there to investigate. A chill crept over 
Keith. 

Cruze was looking at him intently. 
“ There’s something to this Shan Tung 
business,” he said. It’s even getting on 
the old man’s nerves. And he’s very 
anxious to see you, Mr. Conniston. I’ve 
called you up half a dozen times in the 
last hour.” 

He flipped away his cigarette, turned 
alertly, and moved toward the inspector’s 
door. Keith wanted to call him back, to 
leap upon him, if necessary, and drag him 


196 THE RIVER’S END 

away from that deadly door. But he 
neither moved nor spoke until it was too 
late. The door opened, he heard Cruze 
announce his presence, and it seemed to 
him the words were scarcely out of the 
secretary’s mouth when McDowell himself 
stood in the door. 

“ Come in, Conniston,” he said quietly. 

Come in.” 

It was not McDowell’s voice. It was 
restrained, terrible. It was the voice of a 
man speaking softly to cover a terrific fire 
raging within. Keith felt himself doomed. 
Even as he entered, his mind was swiftly 
gathering itself for the last play, the play 
he had set for himself if the crisis came. 
He would cover McDowell, bind and gag 
him even as Cruze sauntered in the hall, 
escape through a window, and with Mary 
Josephine bury himself in the forests be¬ 
fore pursuit could overtake them. There¬ 
fore his amazement was unbounded when 
McDowell, closing the door, seized his 
hand in a grip that made him wince, and 
shook it with unfeigned gladness and 
relief. 

I’m not condemning you, of course,’^ 


THE RIVER’S END 197 

fie said. “ It was rather beastly of me 
to annoy your sister before you were up 
this morning. She flatly refused to rouse 
you, and by George, the way she said it 
made me turn the business of getting into 
touch with you over to Cruze. Sit down, 
Conniston. I’m going to explode a mine 
under you.” 

He flung himself into his swivel chair 
and twisted one of his fierce mustaches, 
while his eyes blazed at Keith. Keith 
waited. He saw the other was like an 
animal ready to spring and anxious to 
spring, the one evident stricture on his 
desire being that there was nothing to 
spring at unless it was himself. 

What happened last night? ” he asked. 

Keith’s mind was already working 
swiftly. McDowell’s question gave him 
the opportunity of making the first play 
against Shan Tung. 

“ Enough to convince me that I am 
going to see Shan Tung today,” he said. 

He noticed the slow clenching and un¬ 
clenching of McDowell’s fingers about the 
arms of his chair. 

“ Then—I was right? ” 


198 THE PaVER’S END 

I htTe every reason to believe you 
were—up to a certain point. I shall know 
positively when I have talked with Shan 
Tung.” 

He smUed grimly. McDowell’s eyes 
were no Larder than his own. The iron 
man drew a deep breath and relaxed a bit 
in his chair. 

If anything should happen,” he said, 
looking away from Keith, as though the 
speech wore merely casual, if he attacks 
you-” 

It might be necessary to kill him in 
self-defense,” finished Keith. 

McDowell made no sign to show that 
he had heard, yet Keith thrilled with the 
conviction that he had struck home. He 
went on telling briefly what had happened 
at Miriam Kirkstone’s house the preceding 
night. McDowell’s face was purple when 
he described the evidences of Shan Tung’s 
presence at the house on the hill, but with 
a mighty effort he restrained his passion. 

“ That’s it, that’s it,” he exclaimed, 
choking back his wrath. “ I knew he was 
there! And this morning both of them lie 
about it—both of them, do you understand! 


THE RIVER’S END 


199 

She lied, looking me straight in the eyes. 
And he lied, and for the first time in his 
life he laughed at me, curse me if he 
didn’t! It was like the gurgle of oil. I 
didn’t know a human could laugh that 
way. And on top of that he told me 
something that I won't believe, so help me 
God, I won’t! ” 

He jumped to his feet and began pacing 
back and forth, his hands clenched behind 
him. Suddenly he whirled on Keith. 

“ Why in heaven’s name didn’t you bring 
Keith back with you or, if not Keith, at 
least a written confession, signed by him? ” 
he demanded. 

This was a blow from, behind for Keith. 

What—what has Keith got to do with 
this? ” he stumbled. 

More than I dare tell you, Conniston. 
But why didn’t you bring back a signed 
confession from him? A dying man is 
usually willing to make that.” 

“ If he is guilty, yes,” agreed Keith. 

But this man was a different sort. If 
he killed Judge Kirkstone, he had no 
regret. He did not consider himself a 
criminal. He felt that he had dealt out 


!200 the RIVER’S END 

justice in his own way, and therefore^ 
even when he was dying, he would not sign 
anything or state anything definitely.” 

McDowell subsided into his chair. 
‘‘And the curse of it is I haven’t a thing 
on Shan Tung,” he gritted. “ Not a thing. 
Miriam Kirkstone is her own mistress, and 
in the eyes of the law he is as innocent 
of crime as I am. If she is voluntarily 
giving herself as a victim to this devil, it 
is her own business—legally, you under¬ 
stand. Morally-” 

He stopped, his savagely gleaming eyes 
boring Keith to the marrow. 

“ He hates you as a snake hates fire¬ 
water. It is possible, if he thought the 

opportunity had come to him-” 

Again he paused, cryptic, waiting for 
the other to gather the thing he had not 
spoken. Keith, simulating two of Con- 
niston’s tricks at the same time, shrugged a 
shoulder and twisted a mustache as he rose 
to his feet. He smiled coolly down at the 
iron man. For once he gave a passable 
imitation of the Englishman. 

“ And he’s going to have the opportunity 
today,” he said understandingly. “ I think, 


THE RIVER’S END 


201 


old chap, I’d better be going. I’m rather 
anxious to see Shan Tung before dinner.” 

McDowell followed him to the door. 
His face had undergone a change. There 
was a tense expectancy, almost an eager¬ 
ness there. Again he gripped Keith’s 
hand, and before the door opened he said, 
“ If trouble comes between you let it 
be in the open, Conniston—in the open 
and not on Shan Tung’s premises.” 

Keith went out, his pulse quickening to 
the significance of the iron man’s words, 
and wondering what the “ mine ” was that 
McDowell had promised to explode, but 
which he had not. 


XVII 


K eith lost no time in heading for Shan 
Tung’s. He was like a man playing 
chess, and the moves were becoming so 
swift and so intricate that his mind had no 
rest. Each hour brought forth its fresh 
necessities and its new alternatives. It was 
McDowell who had given him his last cue, 
perhaps the surest and safest method of 
all for winning his game. The iron man, 
that disciple of the Law who was merciless 
in his demand of an eye for an eye and a 
tooth for a tooth, had let him understand 
that the world would be better off without 
Shan Tung. This man, who never in his 
life had found an excuse for the killer, now 
maneuvered subtly the suggestion for a 
killing. 

Keith was both shocked and amazed. 
“ If anything happens, let it be in the open 
and not on Shan Tung’s premises,” he had 
warned him. That implied in McDowell’s 
mind a cool and calculating premeditation, 


202 


THE RIVER’S END 


203 

the assumption that if Shan Tung was 
killed it would be in self-defense. And 
Keith’s blood leaped to the thrill of it. 
He had not only found the depths of Mc¬ 
Dowell’s personal interest in Miriam Kirk- 
stone, but a last weapon had been placed 
in his hands, a weapon which he could use 
this day if it became necessary. Cornered, 
with no other hope of saving himself, he 
could as a last resort kill Shan Tung—and 
McDowell would stand behind him! 

He went directly to Shan Tung’s cafe 
and sauntered in. There were large 
changes in it since four years ago. The 
moment he passed through its screened 
vestibule, he felt its oriental exclusiveness, 
the sleek and mysterious quietness of it. 
One might have found such a place cater¬ 
ing to the elite of a big city. It spoke 
sumptuously of a large expenditure of 
money, yet there was nothing bizarre or 
irritating to the senses. Its heavily-carved 
tables were almost oppressive in their 
solidity. Linen and silver, like Shan Tung 
himself, were immaculate. Magnificently 
embroidered screens were so cleverly ar¬ 
ranged that one saw not all of the place at 


THE RIVER’S END 


204 

once, but caught vistas of it The few 
voices that Keith heard in this pre-lunch 
hour were subdued, and the speakers were 
concealed by screens. Two orientals, as 
immaculate as the silver and linen, were 
moving about with the silence of velvet- 
padded lynxes. A third, far in the rear, 
stood motionless as one of the carven 
tables, smoking a cigarette and watchful 
as a ferret This was Li King, Shan 
Tung’s right-hand man. 

Keith approached him. When he was 
near enough, Li King gave the slightest 
inclination to his head and took the ciga¬ 
rette from his mouth. Without movement 
or speech he registered the question, 
“ What do you want? ” 

Keith knew this to be a bit of oriental 
guile. In his mind there was no doubt that 
Li King had been fully instructed by his 
master and that he had been expecting 
him, even watching for him. Convinced 
of this, he gave him one of Conniston’s 
cards and said, 

‘^Take this to Shan Tung. He is ex¬ 
pecting me.” 

Li King looked at the card, studied it 


THE PJVER’S END 


205 

for a moment with apparent stupidity, and 
shock his head. “ Shan Tung no home. 
Gone away.” 

That was all. Where he had gone or 
when he would return Keith could not dis¬ 
cover from Li King. Of all other matters 
except that he had gorie away the manager 
of Shan Tung’s affairs was ignorant. 
Keith felt like taking the yellow-skinned 
hypocrite by the throat and choking some¬ 
thing out of him, but he realized that Li 
King was studying and watching him, and 
that he would report to Shan Tung every 
expression that had passed over his face. 
So he looked at his watch, bought a cigar 
at the glass case near the cash register, and 
departed with a cheerful nod, saying that 
he would call again. 

Ten minutes later he determined on a 
bold stroke. There was no time for in¬ 
decision or compromise. He must find 
Shan Tung and find him quickly. And he 
believed that Miriam Kirkstone could give 
him a pretty good tip as to his w^here- 
abouts. He steeled himself to the demand 
he was about to make as he strode up to 
the house on the hill. He was disap- 


2o6 the RIVER’S END 

pointed again. Miss Kirkstone was not at 
home. If she was, she did not answer to 
his knocking and bell ringing. 

He went to the depot. No one he ques¬ 
tioned had seen Shan Tung at the west¬ 
bound train, the only train that had gone 
out that morning, and the agent emphati¬ 
cally disclaimed selling him a ticket. 
Therefore he had not gone far. Suspicion 
leaped red in Keith’s brain. His imagina¬ 
tion pictured Shan Tung at that moment 
with Miriam Kirkstone, and at the thought 
his disgust went out against them both. In 
this humor he returned to McDowell’s of¬ 
fice. He stood before his chief, leaning 
toward him over the desk table. This time 
he was the inquisitor. 

“ Plainly speaking, this liaison is their 
business,” he declared. ‘‘ Because he is 
yellow and she is white doesn’t make it 
ours. I’ve just had a hunch. And I be¬ 
lieve in following hunches, especially when 
one hits you good and hard, and this one 
has given me a jolt that means something. 
Where is that big fat brother of hers?” 
McDowell hesitated. “ It isn’t a 


THE RIVER’S END 


207 

liaison,” he temporized. It’s one-sided 

—a crime against-” 

Where is that big fat brother?*^ With 
each word Keith emphasized his demand 
with a thud of his fist on the table. 
** Where is he? 

McDowell was deeply perturbed. Keith 
could see it and waited. 

After a moment of silence the iron man 
rose from the swivel chair, walked to the 
window, gazed out for another moment, 
and walked back again, twisting one of 
his big gray mustaches in a way that be¬ 
trayed the stress of his emotion. “ Con¬ 
found it, Conniston, you’ve got a mind for 
seeking out the trivialities, and little things 
are sometimes the most embarrassing.” 

“ And somethimes most important,” 
added Keith. “ For instance, it strikes me 
as mighty important that we should know 
where Peter Kirkstone is and why he is 
not here fighting for his sister’s salvation. 
Where is he? ” 

“ I don’t know. He disappeared from 
town a month ago. Miriam says he is 
somewhere in British Columbia looking 


2o8 the RIVER’S END 

over some old mining properties. She 
doesn’t know just where.” 

“ And you believe her? ” 

The eyes of the two men met. There 
was no longer excuse for equivocation. 
Both understood. 

McDowell smiled in recognition of the 
fact. “ No. I think, Conniston, that she 
is the most wonderful little liar that lives. 
And the beautiful part of it is, she is lying 
for a purpose. Imagine Peter Kirkstone, 
who isn’t worth the powder to blov>^ him 
to Plades, interested in old mines or any¬ 
thing else that promises industry or pro¬ 
duction! And the most inconceivable 
thing about the whole mess is that Miriam 
worships that fat and worthless pig of a 
brother. I’ve tried to find him in British 
Columbia. Failed, of course. Another 
proof that this affair between Miriam and 
Shan Tung isn’t a voluntary liaison on her 
part. She’s lying. She’s walking on a 
pavement of lies. If she told the 
truth-” 

“ There are some truths which one can¬ 
not tell about oneself,” interrupted Keith. 
“ They must be discovered or buried. And 



THE RIVER’S END 


209 

Pm going deeper into this prospecting and 
undertaking business this afternoon. I’ve 
got another hunch, I think I’ll have some¬ 
thing interesting to report before night.” 

Ten minutes later, on his way to the 
Shack, he was discussing with himself the 
modus operandi of that hunch.” It had 
come to him in an instant, a flash of in¬ 
spiration. That afternoon he would see 
Miriam Kirkstone and question her about 
Peter. Then he would return to Mc¬ 
Dowell, lay stress on the importance of 
the brother, tell him that he had a clew 
which he wanted to follow, and suggest 
finally a swift trip to British Columbia. 
He would take Mary Josephine, lie low 
until his term of service expired, and then 
report by letter to McDowell that he had 
failed and that he had made up his mind 
not to reenlist but to try his fortunes with 
Mary Josephine in Australia. Before 
McDowell received that letter, they could 
be on their way into the mountains. The 
hunch ” offered an opportunity for a 
clean getaway, and in his jubilation 
Miriam Kirkstone and her affairs were 
important only as a means to an end. He 


210 


THE RIVER’S END 


was John Keith now, fighting for John 
Keith’s life—and Derwent Conniston’s 
sister. 

Mary Josephine herself put the first shot 
into the fabric of his plans. She must 
have been watching for him, for when 
halfway up the slope he saw her coming 
to meet him. She scolded him for being 
away from her, as he had expected her to 
do. Then she pulled his arm about her 
slim little waist and held the hand thus 
engaged in both her own as they walked 
up the winding path. He noticed the little 
wrinkles in her adorable forehead. 

Derry, is it the right thing for young 
ladies to call on their gentlemen friends 
over here? ” she asked suddenly. 

“ Why—er—that depends, Mary Jose¬ 
phine. You mean-” 

“Yes, I do, Derwent Connistonl She’s 
pretty, and I don’t blame you, but I can’t 
help feeling that I don’t like it! ” 

His arm tightened about her until she 
gasped. The fragile softness of her waist 
was a joy to him. 

“Derry!” she remonstrated. “If you 
do that again. I’ll break! ” 


THE RIVER’S END 


2II 


I couldn’t help it,” he pleaded. I 
couldn’t, dear. The way you said it just 
made my arm close up tight. I’m glad you 
didn’t like it. I can love only one at a 
time, and I’m loving you, and I’m going 
on loving you all my life.” 

I wasn’t jealous,” she protested, blush¬ 
ing. “ But she called twice on the tele¬ 
phone and then came up. And she’s 
pretty.” 

I suppose you mean Miss Kirkstone?” 
“ Yes. She was frightfully anxious to 
see you, Derry.” 

And what did you think of her, dear? ” 
She cast a swift look up into his face. 

Why, I like her. She’s sweet and pretty, 
and I fell in love with her hair. But 
something was troubling her this morning. 
I’m quite sure of it, though she tried to 
keep it back.” 

She was nervous, you mean, and pale, 
with sometimes a frightened look in her 
eyes. Was that it? ” 

“ You seem to know, Derry. I think it 
was all that.” 

He nodded. He saw his horizon aglow 
with the smile of fortune. Everything 


212 


THE RIVER’S END 

was coming propitiously for him, even this 
unexpected visit of Miriam Kirkstone. 
He did not trouble himself to speculate 
as to the object of her visit, for he was 
grappling now with his own opportunity, 
his chance to get away, to win out for 
himself in one last master-stroke, and his 
mind was concentrated in that direction. 
The time was ripe to tell these things to 
Mary Josephine. She must be prepared. 

On the flat table of the hill where Brady 
had built his bungalow were scattered 
clumps of golden birch, and in the shelter 
of one of the nearer clumps was a bench, 
to which Keith drew Mary Josephine, 
Thereafter for many minutes he spoke 
his plans. Mary Josephine’s cheeks grew 
flushed. Her eyes shone with excitement 
and eagerness. She thrilled to the story 
he told her of what they would do in those 
wonderful mountains of gold and mystery, 
just they two alone. He made her under¬ 
stand even more definitely that his safety 
and their mutual happiness depended upon 
the secrecy of their final project, that in a 
way they were conspirators and must act 
as such. They might start for the west 


THE RIVER’S END 213 

tonight or tomorrow, and she must get 
ready. 

There he should have stopped. But 
with Mary Josephine’s warm little hand 
clinging to his and her beautiful eyes shin¬ 
ing at him like liquid stars, he felt within 
him an overwhelming faith and desire, and 
he went on, making a clean breast of the 
situation that was giving them the oppor¬ 
tunity to get away. He felt no prick of 
conscience at thought of Miriam Kirk- 
stone’s affairs. Her destiny must be, as 
he had told McDowell, largely a matter 
of her own choosing. Besides, she had 
McDowell to fight for her. And the big 
fat brother, too. So without fear of its 
effect he told Mary Josephine of the mys¬ 
terious liaison between Miriam Kirkstone 
and Shan Tung, of McDowell’s suspicions, 
of his own beliefs, and how it was all 
working out for their own good. 

Not until then did he begin to see the 
changing lights in her eyes. Not until he 
had finished did he notice that most of that 
vivid flush of joy had gone from her face 
and that she was looking at him in a 
strained, tense way. He felt then the re- 


THE RIVER’S END 


214 

action. She was not looking at the thing 
as he was looking at it. He had offered 
to her another woman’s tragedy as their 
opportunity, and her own woman’s heart 
had responded in the way that has been 
woman’s since the dawn of life. A sense 
of shame which he fought and tried to 
crush took possession of him. He was 
right. He must be right, for it was his 
life that was hanging in the balance. Yet 
Mary Josephine could not know that. 

Her fingers had tightened about his, and 
she was looking away from him. He saw 
now that the color had almost gone from 
her face. There was the flash of a new 
fire in her eyes. 

And that was why she was nervous 
and pale, with sometimes a frightened look 
in her eyes,” she spoke softly, repeating his 
words. ‘‘ It was because of this Chinese 
monster, Shan Tung—because he has some 
sort of power over her, you say—be¬ 
cause-” 

She snatched her hand from his with a 
suddenness that startled him. Her eyes, so 
beautiful and soft a few minutes before, 



THE RIVER’S END 


215 

scintillated fire. ‘‘ Derry, if you don’t fix 
this heathen devil —I will!'' 

She stood up before him, breathing 
quickly, and he beheld in her not the soft, 
slim-waisted little goddess of half an hour 
ago, but the fiercest fighter of all the fight¬ 
ing ages, a woman roused. And no longer 
fear, but a glory swept over him. She was 
Conniston’s sister, and she was Conniston, 
Even as he saw his plans falling about him, 
he opened his arms and held them out to 
her, and with the swiftness of love she ran 
into them, putting her hands to his face 
while he held her close and kissed her lips. 

“ You bet we’ll fix that heathen devil 
before we go,” he said. You bet we will 
— sweetheart! 


XVIII 


W ALLIE, suffering the outrage of one 
who sees his dinner growing cold, 
found Keith and Mary Josephine in the 
edge of the golden birch and implored 
them to come and eat. It was a marvel of 
a dinner. Over Mary Josephine’s coffee 
and Keith’s cigar they discussed their final 
plans. Keith made the big promise that he 
would ‘‘ fix Shan Tung ” in a hurry, per¬ 
haps that very afternoon. In the glow of 
Mary Josephine’s proud eyes he felt no 
task too large for him, and he was eager 
to be at it. But when his cigar was half 
done, Mary Josephine came around and 
perched herself on the arm of his chair, 
and began running her fingers through his 
hair. All desire to go after Shan Tung 
left him. He would have remained there 
forever. Twice she bent down and 
touched his forehead lightly with her lips. 
Again his arm was round her soft little 
waist, and his heart was pumping like a 

216 


THE RIVER’S END 217 

thing overworked. It was Mary Josephine, 
finally, who sent him on his mission, but 
not before she stood on tiptoe, her hand? 
on his shoulders, giving him her mouth to 
kiss. 

An army at his back could not have 
strengthened Keith with a vaster deter¬ 
mination than that kiss. There would be 
no more quibbling. His mind was made 
up definitely on the point. And his first 
move was to head straight for the Kirk- 
stone house on the hill. 

He did not get as far as the door this 
time. He caught a vision of Miriam Kirk- 
stone in the shrubbery, bareheaded, her 
hair glowing radiantly in the sun. It oc¬ 
curred to him suddenly that it was her 
hair that roused the venom in him when 
he thought of her as the property of Shan 
Tung. If it had been black or even brown, 
the thought might not have emphasized 
itself so unpleasantly in his mind. But 
that vivid gold cried out against the crime, 
even against the girl herself. She saw him 
almost in the instant his eyes fell upon her, 
and came forward quickly to meet him. 
There was an eagerness in her face that 


2i8 the RIVER’S END 

told him his coming relieved her of a ter¬ 
rific suspense. 

‘‘ I’m sorry I wasn’t at the Shack when 
you came, Miss Kirkstone,” he said, taking 
for a moment the hand she offered him. 
“ I fancy you were up there to see me 
about Shan Tung.” 

He sent the shot bluntly, straight home. 
In the tone of his voice there was no 
apology. He saw her grow cold, her eyes 
fixed on him staringly, as though she not 
only heard his words but saw what was in 
his mind. 

‘‘Wasn’t that it. Miss Kirkstone?” 

She nodded affirmatively, but her lips 
did not move. 

“Shan Tung,” he repeated. “Miss 
Kirkstone, what is the trouble? Why don’t 
you confide in someone, in McDowell, in 
me, in-” 

He was going to say “ your brother,” but 
the suddenness with which she caught his 
arm cut the words short. 

“ Shan Tung has been to see him—^ 
McDowell?” she questioned excitedly. 
“He has been there today? And he 
told him-” She stopped, breathing 


THE RIVER’S END 


2 IQ 

quickly, her fingers tightening on his arm. 

“ I don’t know what passed between 
them,” said Keith. But McDowell was 
tremendously worked up about you. So 
am I. We might as well be frank. Miss 
Kirkstone. There’s something rotten in 
Denmark when two people like you and 
Shan Tung mix up. And you are mixed; 
you can’t deny it. You have been to see 
Shan Tung late at night. Fie was in the 
house with you the first night I saw you. 
More than that —he is in your house 
now! 

She shrank back as if he had struck at 
her. ‘^No, no, no,” she cried. “He isn’t 
there. I tell you, he isn’t!” 

“ How am I to believe you? ” demanded 
Keith. “You have not told the truth‘to 
McDowell. You are fighting to cover up 
the truth. And we know it is because of 
Shan Tung. Why? I am here to fight for 
you, to help you. And McDowell, too. 
That is why we must know. Miss Kirk¬ 
stone, do you love the Chinaman?” 

He knew the words were an insult. He 
had guessed their effect. As if struck there 
suddenly by a painter’s brush, two vivid 


220 


THE RIVER’S END 


spots appeared in the girl’s pale cheeks. 
She shrank back from him another step. 
Her eyes blazed. Slowly, without turning 
their flame from his face, she pointed to 
the edge of the shrubbery a few feet from 
where they were standing. He looked. 
Twisted and partly coiled on the mold, 
where it had been clubbed to death, was a 
little green grass snake. 

^ I hate him—like that! ” she said. 

His eyes came back to her. “ Then for 
some reason known only to you and Shan 
Tung you have sold or are intending to 
sell yourself to him! ” 

It was not a question. It was an accusa¬ 
tion. He saw the flush of anger fading 
out of her checks. Her body relaxed, her 
head dropped, and slowly she nodded in 
confirmation. 

Yes, I am going to sell myself to him.” 

The astounding confession held him 
mute for a space. In the interval it was 
the girl who became self-possessed. What 
she said next amazed him still more. 

“ I have confessed so much because I 
am positive that you will not betray me. 
And I went up to the Shack to find you, 


221 


THE RIVER’S END 

because I want you to help me find a 
story to tell McDowell. You said you 
would help me. Will you?” 

He still did not speak, and she went on. 

I am accepting that promise as 
granted, too. McDowell mistrusts, but he 
must not know. You must help me there. 
You must help me for two or three weeks. 
At the end of that time something may 
happen. He must be made to have faith in 
me again. Do you understand?” 

Partly,” said Keith. “ You ask me to 
do this blindly, without knowing why I 
am doing it, without any explanation what¬ 
ever on your part except that for some 
unknown and mysterious price you are 
going to sell yourself to Shan Tung. You 
want me to cover and abet this monstrous 
deal by hoodwinking the man whose sus¬ 
picions threaten its consummation. If 
there was not in my own mind a sus¬ 
picion that you are insane, I should say 
your proposition is as ludicrous as it is im¬ 
possible. Having that suspicion, it is a 
bit tragic. Also it is impossible. It is 
necessary for you first to tell me why you 
are going to sell yourself to Shan Tung.” 


222 


THE RIVER’S END 


Her face was coldly white and calm 
again. But her hands trembled. He saw 
her try to hide them, and pitied her. 

“ Then I won’t trouble you any more, 
for that, too, is impossible,” she said. 
“ May I trust you to keep in confidence 
what I have told you? Perhaps I have 
had too much faith in you for a reason 
which has no reason, because you were 
with John Keith. John Keith was the one 
other man who might have helped me.” 

And why John Keith? How could he 
have helped you? ” 

She shook her head. If I told you 
that, I should be answering the question 
which is impossible.” 

He saw himself facing a checkmate. To 
plead, to argue with her, he knew would 
profit him nothing. A new thought came 
to him, swift and imperative. The end 
would justify the means. He clenched his 
hands. He forced into his face a look that 
was black and vengeful. And he turned 
it on her. 

‘‘ Listen to me,” he cried. You are 
playing a game, and so am I. Possibly we 
are selfish, both of us, looking each to his 


THE RIVER’S END 223 

own interests with no thought of the other. 
Will you help me, if I help you?” 

Again he pitied her as he saw with what 
eager swiftness she caught at his bait 

“ Yes,” she nodded, catching her breath. 

Yes, I will help you.” 

His face grew blacker. He raised his 
clenched hands so she could see them, and 
advanced a step toward her. 

“ Then tell me this—^would you care if 
something happened to Shan Tung? 
Would you care if he died, if he was 
killed, if-” 

Her breath was coming faster and faster. 
Again the red spots blazed in her cheeks. 

Would you care?'' he demanded. 

No—no—I wouldn’t care. He de¬ 
serves to die.” 

Then tell me where Shan Tung is. 
For my game is with him. And I believe 
it is a bigger game than your game, for it 
is a game of life and death. That is why 
I am interested in your affair. It is be¬ 
cause I am selfish, because I have my own 
score to settle, and because you can help 
me. I shall ask you no more questions 
about yourself. And I shall keep your 



THE RIVER’S END 


224 

secret and help you with McDowell if you 
will keep mine and help me. First, where 
is Shan Tung? ” 

She hesitated for barely an instant. “ He 
has gone out of town. He will be away 
for ten days.” 

But he bought no ticket; no one saw 
him leave by train.” 

“No, he walked up the river. An auto 
was waiting for him. Fie will pass 
through tonight on the eastbound train on 
his way to Winnipeg.” 

“ Will you tell me why he is going to 
Winnipeg? ” 

“No, I cannot.” 

He shrugged his shoulders. “ It is 
scarcely necessary to ask. I can guess. It 
is to see your brother.” 

Again he knew he had struck home. 
And yet she said, 

“ No, it is not to see my brother.” 

He held out his hand to her. “ Miss 
Kirkstone, I am going to keep my promise. 
I am going to help you with McDowell. 
Of course I demand my price. Will you 
swear on your word of honor to let me 
know the moment Shan Tung returns? ” 


THE RIVER’S END 


225 


I will let you know.” 

Their hands clasped. Looking into her 
eyes, Keith saw what told him his was not 
the greatest cross to bear. Miriam Kirk- 
stone also was fighting for her life, and as 
he turned to leave her, he said: 

While there is life there is hope. In 
settling my score with Shan Tung I believe 
that I shall also settle yours. It is a 
strong hunch. Miss Kirkstone, and it's 
holding me tight. Ten days, Shan Tung, 
and then-” 

He left her, smiling. Miriam Kirkstone 
watched him go, her slim hands clutched 
at her breast, her eyes aglow with a new 
thought, a new hope; and as he heard the 
gate slam behind him, a sobbing cry rose in 
her throat, and she reached out her hands 
as if to call him back, for something was 
telling her that through this man lay the 
way to her salvation. 

And her lips were moaning softly, “ Ten 
days—ten days—and then—^what? ” 


XIX 


I N those ten days all the wonders of 
June came up out of the south. Life 
pulsed with a new and vibrant force. The 
crimson fire-flowers, first of wild blooms to 
come after snow and frost, splashed the 
green spaces with red. The forests took 
on new colors, the blue of the sky grew 
nearer, and in men’s veins the blood ran 
with new vigor and anticipations. To 
Keith they were all this and more. Four 
years along the rim of the Arctic had 
made it possible for him to drink to the 
full the glory of early summer along the 
Saskatchewan. And to Mary Josephine it 
was all new. Never had she seen a sum¬ 
mer like this that was dawning, that most 
wonderful of all the summers in the world, 
which comes in June along the southern 
edge of the Northland. 

Keith had played his promised part. 
It was not difficult for him to wipe away 

226 


THE RIVER’S END 


227 

the worst of McDowell’s suspicions re¬ 
garding Miss Kirkstone, for McDowell 
was eager to believe. When Keith told 
him that Miriam was on the verge of a 
nervous breakdown simply because of cer¬ 
tain trouble into which Shan Tung had 
inveigled her brother, and that everything 
would be straightened out the moment 
Shan Tung returned from Winnipeg, the 
iron man seized his bands in a sudden 
burst of relief and gratitude. 

“ But why didn’t she confide in me, 
Conniston? ” he complained. Why didn’t 
she confide in me?” The anxiety in his 
voice, its note of disappointment, were 
almost boyish. 

Keith was prepared. Because-” 

He hesitated, as if projecting the thing 
in his mind. McDowell, I’m in a deli¬ 
cate position. You must understand with¬ 
out forcing me to say too much. You are 
the last man in the world Miss Kirkstone 
wants to know about her trouble until she 
has triumphed, and it is over. Delicacy, 
perhaps; a woman’s desire to keep some¬ 
thing she is ashamed of from the one man 
she looks up to above all other men—to 


228 


THE RIVER’S END 


keep it away from him until she has 
cleared herself so that there is no suspicion. 
McDowell, if I were you, I’d be proud of 
her for that.” 

McDowell turned away, and for a space 
Keith saw the muscles in the back of his 
neck twitching. 

Derwent, maybe you’ve guessed, may¬ 
be you understand,” he said after a moment 
with his face still turned to the window. 
“ Of course she will never know. I’m too 
old, old enough to be her father. But 
I’ve got the right to watch over her, and 
if any man ever injures her-” 

His fists grew knotted, and softly Keith 
said behind him: 

“You’d possibly do what John Keith 
did to the man who wronged his father. 
And because the Law is not always omni¬ 
scient, it is also possible that Shan Tung 
may have to answer in some such way. 
Until then, until she comes to you of her 
own free will and with gladness in her eyes 
tells you her own secret and why she kept 
it from you—until she does that, I say, 
it is your part to treat her as if you had 
seen nothing, guessed nothing, suspected 



THE RIVER’S END 


229 

nothing. Do that, McDowell, and leave 
the rest to me.” 

He went out, leaving the iron man still 
with his face to the window. 

With Mary Josephine there was no 
subterfuge. His mind was still centered 
in his own happiness. He could not wipe 
out of his brain the conviction that if he 
waited for Shan Tung he was waiting just 
so long under the sword of Damocles, 
with a hair between him and doom. He 
hoped that Miriam Kirkstone’s refusal 
to confide in him and her reluctance to 
furnish him with the smallest facts in the 
matter would turn Mary Josephine’s sym¬ 
pathy into a feeling of indifference if not 
of actual resentment. He was disap¬ 
pointed. Mary Josephine insisted on hav¬ 
ing Miss Kirkstone over for dinner the 
next day, and from that hour something 
grew between the two girls which Keith 
knev/ he was powerless to overcome. 
Thereafter he bowed his head to fate. 
He must wait for Shan Tung. 

If it wasn’t for your promise not to 
fall in love, I’d be afraid,” Mary Jose¬ 
phine confided to him that night, perched 


THE RIVER’S END 


230 

on the arm of his big chair. “ A ■ < ‘ k { 

was afraid today, Derry. She ^^ely 
And you like pretty hair—and C c?*- is 
wonderful! ” 

“ I don’t remember,” said Keith quietly, 
“ that I promised you I wouldn’t fall in 
love. I’m desperately in love, and with 
you, Mary Josephine. And as for Miss 
Kirkstone’s lovely hair—I wouldn’t trade 
one of yours for all she has on her head.” 

At that, with a riotous little laugh of 
joy, Mary Josephine swiftly unbound her 
hair and let it smother about his face and 
shoulders. “ Sometimes I have a terribly 
funny thought, Derry,” she whispered. 

If we hadn’t always been sweethearts, 
back there at home, and if you hadn’t 
always liked my hair, and kissed me, and 
told me I was pretty, I’d almost think you 
weren’t my brother! ” 

Keith laughed and was glad that her 
hair covered his face. 

During those wonderful first days of the 
summer they were inseparable, except 
when matters of business took Keith away. 
During these times he prepared for even¬ 
tualities. The Keith properties in Prince 


THE RIVER’S END 231] 

Albert, he estimated, were worth at least 
a hundred thousand dollars, and he learned 
from McDowell that they would soon go 
through a process of law before being 
turned over to his fortunate inheritors. 
Before that time, however, he knew that 
his own fate would be sealed one way or 
the other, and now that he had Mary 
Josephine to look after, he made a will, 
leaving everything to her, and signing him¬ 
self John Keith. This will he carried in 
an envelope pinned inside his shirt. As 
Derwent Conniston he collected one thou¬ 
sand two hundred and sixty dollars for 
three and a half years back wage in the 
Service. Two hundred and sixty of this he 
kept in his own pocket. The remaining 
thousand he counted out in new hundred- 
dollar bills under Mary Josephine’s eyes, 
sealed the bills in another envelope, and 
gave the envelope to her. 

“ It’s safer with you than with me,” he 
excused himself. “ Fasten it inside your 
dress. It’s our grub-stake into the moun¬ 
tains.” 

Mary Josephine accepted the treasure 
with the repressed delight of one upon 


232 THE RIVER’S END 

whose fair shoulders had been placed a 
tremendous responsibility. 

They were days of both joy and pain for 
Keith. For even in the fullest hours of 
his happiness .there was a thing eating at 
his heart, a thing that was eating deeper 
and deeper until at times it was like a 
destroying flame within him. One night 
he dreamed; he dreamed that Conniston 
came to his bedside and wakened him, and 
that after wakening him he taunted him 
in ghoulish glee and told him that in be¬ 
queathing him a sister he had given unto 
him forever and forever the curse of the 
daughters of Achelous. And Keith, wak¬ 
ing in the dark hour of night, knew in his 
despair that it was so. For all time, even 
though he won this fight he was fighting, 
Mary Josephine would be the unattainable. 
A sister—and he loved her with the love 
of a man! 

It was the next day after the dream 
that they wandered again into the grove 
that sheltered Keith’s old home, and again 
they entered it and went through the cold 
and empty rooms. In one of these rooms 
he sought among the titles of dusty rows 


THE RIVER’S END 233 

of books until he came to one and opened 
it. And there he found what had been 
in the corner of his mind when the sun 
rose to give him courage after the night of 
his dream. The daughters of Achelous 
had lost in the end. Ulysses had tricked 
them. Ulysses had won. And in this day 
and age it was up to him, John Keith, to 
win, and win he would! 

Always he felt this mastering certainty 
of the future when alone with Mary 
Josephine in the open day. With her at 
his side, her hand in his, and his arm about 
her waist, he told himself that all life was 
a lie—that there was no earth, no sun, no 
song or gladness in all the world, if that 
world held no hope for him. It was there. 
It was beyond the rim of forest. It was 
beyond the yellow plains, beyond the far¬ 
thest timber of the farthest prairie, be¬ 
yond the foothills; in the heart of the 
mountains was its abiding place. As he 
had dreamed of those mountains in boy¬ 
hood and youth, so new he dreamed his 
dreams over again with Mary Josephine. 
For her he painted his pictures of them, 
as they wandered mile after mile up the 


234 the RIVER’S END 

shore of the Saskatchewan—the little world 
they would make all for themselves, how 
they would live, what they would do, the 
mysteries they would seek out, the triumphs 
they would achieve, the glory of that world 
—just for two. And Mary Josephine 
planned and dreamed with him. 

In a week they lived what might have 
been encompassed in a year. So it seemed 
to Keith, who had known her only so long. 
With Mary Josephine the view-point was 
different. There had been a long separa¬ 
tion, a separation filled with a heartbreak 
which she would never forget, but it had 
not served to weaken the bonds between 
her and this loved one, who, she thought, 
had always been her own. To her their 
comradeship was more complete now than 
it ever had been, even back in the old 
days, for they were alone in a land that 
was strange to her, and one was all that the 
world held for the other. So her posses- 
sorship of Keith was a thing which—again 
in the dark and brooding hours of night— 
sometimes made him writhe in an agony of 
shame. Hers was a shameless love, a love 
which had not even the lover’s reason for 


THE RIVER’S END 


235 

embarrassment, a love unreserved and open 
as the day. It was her trick, nights, to 
nestle herself in the big armchair with 
him, and it was her fun to smother his 
face in her hair and tumble it about him, 
piling it over his mouth and nose until she 
made him plead for air. Again she would 
fit herself comfortably in the hollow of his 
arm and sit the evening out with her head 
on his shoulder, while they planned their 
future, and twice in that week she fell 
asleep there. Each morning she greeted 
him with a kiss, and each night she came 
to him to be kissed, and when it was her 
pleasure she kissed him—or made him kiss 
her—when they were on their long walks. 
It was bitter-sweet to Keith, and more fre¬ 
quently came the hours of crushing deso¬ 
lation for him, those hours in the still, 
dark night when his hypocrisy and his 
crime stood out stark and hideous in his 
troubled brain. 

As this thing grew in him, a black and 
foreboding thunderstorm on the horizon 
of his dreams, an impulse which he did 
not resist dragged him more and more fre¬ 
quently down to the old home, and Mary 


236 THE RIVER’S END 

Josephine was always with him. They let 
no one know of these visits. And they 
talked about John Keith, and in Mary 
Josephine’s eyes he saw more than once 
a soft and starry glow of understanding. 
She loved the memory of this man because 
he, her brother, had loved him. And after 
these hours came the nights when truth, 
smiling at him, flung aside its mask and 
stood a grinning specter, and he measured 
to the depths the falseness of his triumph. 
His comfort was the thought that she knew. 
Whatever happened, she would know what 
John Keith had been. For he, John Keith, 
had told her. So much of the truth had 
he lived. 

He fought against the new strain that 
was descending upon him slowly and stead¬ 
ily as the days passed. He could not but 
see the new light that had grown in Mir¬ 
iam Kirkstone’s eyes. At times it was more 
than a dawn of hope. It was almost cer¬ 
tainty. She had faith in him, faith in his 
promise to her, in his power to fight, his 
strength to win. Her growing friendship 
with Mary Josephine accentuated this, in¬ 
spiring her at times almost to a point of 


THE RIVER’S END 237 

conviction, for Mary Josephine’s confi¬ 
dence in him was a passion. Even Mc¬ 
Dowell, primarily a fighter of his own 
battles, cautious and suspicious, had faith 
in him while he waited for Shan Tung. 
It was this blind belief in him that de¬ 
pressed him more than all else, for he 
knew that victory for himself must be 
based more or less on deceit and treachery. 
For the first time he heard Miriam laugh 
with Mary Josephine; he saw the gold and 
the brown head together out in the sun; 
he saw her face shining with a light that 
he had never seen there before, and then, 
when he came upon them, their faces were 
turned to him, and his heart bled even as 
he smiled and held out his hands to Mary 
Josephine. They trusted him, and he was 
a liar, a hypocrite, a Pharisee. 

On the ninth day he had finished supper 
with Mary Josephine when the telephone 
rang. He rose to answer it. It was 
Miriam Kirkstone. 

“ He has returned,” she said. 

That was all. The words were in a 
choking voice. He answered and hung up 
the receiver. He knew a change had come 


238 THE RIVER’S END 

into his face when he turned to Mary 
Josephine. He steeled himself to a com¬ 
posure that drew a questioning tenseness 
into her face. Gently he stroked her soft 
hair, explaining that Shan Tung had re¬ 
turned and that he was going to see him. 
In his bedroom he strapped his Service 
automatic under his coat. 

At the door, ready to go, he paused. 
Mary Josephine came to him and put her 
hands to his shoulders. A strange unrest 
was in her eyes, a question which she did 
not ask. 

Something v/hispered to him that it was 
the last time. Whatever happened now, 
tonight must leave him clean. His arms 
went around her, he drew her close against 
his breast, and for a space he held her 
there, looking into her eyes. 

“You love me?” he asked softly. 

“ More than anything else in the world,” 
she whispered. 

“ Kiss me, Mary Josephine.” 

Her lips pressed to his. 

He released her from his arms, slowly, 
lingeringly. 

After that she stood in the lighted door- 


THE RIVER’S END 


239 

way, watching him, until he disappeared in 
the gloom of the slope. She called good- 
by, and he answered her. The door closed. 
And he went down into the valley, a hand 
of foreboding gripping at his heart. 


XX 


W ITH a face out of which all color 
had fled, and eyes filled with the 
ghosts of a new horror, Miriam Kirkstone 
stood before Keith in the big room in the 
house on the hill. 

He was here—ten minutes,” she said, 
and her voice was as if she was forcing it 
out of a part of her that was dead and 
cold. It was lifeless, emotionless, a living 
voice and yet strange with the chill of 
death. In those ten minutes he told me 

—that! If you fail-” 

It was her throat that held him, fas¬ 
cinated him. White, slim, beautiful—her 
heart seemed pulsing there. And he could 
see that heart choke back the words she 
was about to speak. 

If I fail-” he repeated the words 

slowly after her, watching that white, beat¬ 
ing throat. 

“ There is only the one thing left for me 
to do. You—you—understand?” 

240 


THE RIVER’S END 241: 

‘^Yes, I understand. Therefore I shall 
not fail.” 

He backed away from her toward the 
door, and still he could not take his eyes 
from the white throat with its beating 
heart. “ I shall not fail,” he repeated. 

And when the telephone rings, you will 
be here—to answer? ” 

Yes, here,” she replied huskily. 

He went out. Under his feet the 
gravelly path ran through a flood of moon¬ 
light. Over him the sky was agleam with 
stars. It was a white night, one of those 
wonderful gold-white nights in the land of 
the Saskatchewan. Under that sky thcj 
world was alive. The little city lay in a 
golden glimmer of lights. Out of it rose 
a murmur, a rippling stream of sound, 
the voice of its life, softened by the little 
valley between. Into it Keith descended. 
He passed men and women, laughing, talk- 
ing, gay. He heard music. The main 
street was a moving throng. On a corner 
the Salvation Army, a young woman, a 
young man, a crippled boy, two young 
girls, and an old man, were singing 
‘^Nearer, My God, to Thee.” Opposite 


242 THE RIVER’S END 

the Board of Trade building on the edge 
of the river a street medicine-fakir had 
drawn a crowd to his wagon. To the beat 
of the Salvation Army’s tambourine rose 
the thrum of a made-up negro’s banjo. 

Through these things Keith passed, his 
eyes open, his ears listening, but he passed 
swiftly. What he saw and what he heard 
pressed upon him with the chilling thrill 
of that last swan-song, the swan-song of 
Ecla, of Kobat, of Ty, who had heard 
their doom chanted from the mountain- 
tops. It was the city rising up about his 
ears in rejoicing and triumph. And it 
put in his heart a cold, impassive anger. 
He sensed an impending doom, and yet he 
was not afraid. He was no longer chained 
by dreams, no more restrained by self. 
Before his eyes, beating, beating, beating, 
he saw that tremulous heart in Miriam 
Kirkstone’s soft, white throat. 

He came to Shan Tung’s. Beyond the 
softly curtained windows it was a yellow 
glare of light. He entered and met the 
flow of life, the murmur of voices and 
laughter, the tinkle of glasses, the scent 
of cigarette smoke, and the fainter perfume 


THE RIVER’S END 


243 

of incense. And where he had seen him 
last, as though he had not moved since that 
hour nine days ago, still with his ciga¬ 
rette, still sphinx-like, narrow-eyed, watch¬ 
ful, stood Li King. 

Keith walked straight to him. And this 
time, as he approached, Li King greeted 
him with a quick and subtle smile. He 
flipped his cigarette to the tiled floor. He 
was bowing, gracious. Tonight he was not 
stupid. 

“ I have come to see Shan Tung,” said 
Keith. 

He had half expected to be refused, in 
which event he was prepared to use his 
prerogative as an officer of the law to gain 
his point. But Li King did not hesitate. 
He was almost eager. And Keith knew 
that Shan Tung was expecting him. 

They passed behind one of the screens 
and then behind another, until it seemed to 
Keith their way was a sinuous twisting 
among screens. They paused before a 
panel in the wall, and Li King pressed the 
black throat of a long-legged, swan-necked 
bird with huge wings and the panel opened 
and swung toward them. It was dark in- 


THE RIVER’S END 


244 

side, but Li King turned on a light 
Through a narrow hallway ten feet in 
length he led the way, unlocked a second 
door, and held it open, smiling at Keith. 

^ , “Up there,” he said. 
i A flight of steps led upward and as 
Keith began to mount them the door closed 
softly behind him. Li King accompanied 
him no further. 

He mounted the steps, treading softly. 
At the top was another door, and this he 
opened as quietly as Li King had closed 
the one below him. Again the omnipresent 
screens, and then his eyes looked out upon 
a scene which made him pause in astonish¬ 
ment. It was a great room, a room fifty 
feet long by thirty in width, and never 
before had he beheld such luxury as it con¬ 
tained. His feet sank into velvet carpets, 
the walls were hung richly with the golds 
and browns and crimsons of priceless tapes¬ 
tries, and carven tables and divans of deep 
plush and oriental chairs filled the space 
before him. At the far end was a raised 
dais, and before this, illumined in candle- 
glow, was a kneeling figure. He noticed 
then that there were many candles burning, 


THE RIVER’S END 


245 

that the room was lighted by candles, and 
that in their illumination the figure did not 
move. He caught the glint of armors 
standing up, v/arrior like, against the 
tapestries, and he wondered for a moment 
if the kneeling figure was a heathen god 
made of wood. It was then that he 
smelled the odor of frankincense; it crept 
subtly into his nostrils and his mouth, 
sweetened his breath, and made him 
cough. 

At the far end, before the dais, the 
kneeling figure began to move. Its arms 
extended slowly, they swept backward, 
then out again, and three times the figure 
bowed itself and straightened, and with 
the movement came a low, human mono¬ 
tone. It was over quickly. Probably two 
full minutes had not passed since Keith 
had entered when the kneeling figure 
sprang to its feet with the quickness of a 
cat, faced about, and stood there, smiling 
and bowing and extending its hand. 

Good evening, John Keith!” It was 
Shan Tung. An oriental gown fell about 
him, draping him like a woman. It was 
a crimson gown, grotesquely ornamented 


246 THE RIVER’S END 

with embroidered peacocks, and it flowed 
and swept about him in graceful undula¬ 
tions as he advanced, his footfalls making 
not the sound of a mouse on the velvet 
floors. 

“ Good evening, John Keith! ” He was 
close, smiling, his eyes glowing, his hand 
still outstretched, friendliness in his voice 
and manner. And yet in that voice there 
was a purr, the purr of a cat watching its 
prey, and in his eyes a glow that was the 
soft rejoicing of a triumph. 

Keith did not take the hand. He made 
as if he did not see it. He was looking 
into those glowing, confident eyes of the 
Chinaman. A Chinaman! Was it pos¬ 
sible? Could a Chinaman possess that 
voice, whose very perfection shamed him? 

Shan Tung seemed to read his thoughts* 
And what he found amused him, and he 
bowed again, still smiling. “ I am Shan 
Tung,” he said with the slightest inflection 
of irony. “ Here—in my home—I am dif¬ 
ferent. Do you not recognize me? ” 

He waved gracefully a hand toward a 
table on either side of which was a chain 
He seated himself, not waiting for Keitk 


THE RIVER’S END 247 

Keith sat down opposite him. Again he 
must have read what was in Keith’s heart, 
the desire and the intent to kill, for sud¬ 
denly he clapped his hands, not loudly, 
once—twice- 

“You will join me in tea?” he asked. 

Scarcely had he spoken when about 
them, on all sides of them it seemed to 
Keith, there was a rustle of life. He saw 
tapestries move. Before his eyes a panel 
became a door. There was a clicking, a 
stir as of gowns, soft footsteps, a movement 
in the air. Out of the panel doorway came 
a Chinaman with a cloth, napkins, and 
chinaware. Behind him followed a second 
with tea-urn and a bowl, and with the 
suddenness of an apparition, without sound 
or movement, a third was standing at 
Keith’s side. And still there was rustling 
behind, still there was the whispering beat 
of life, and Keith knew that there were 
others. He did not flinch, but smiled back 
at Shan Tung. A minute, no more, and 
the soft-footed yellow men had performed 
their errands and were gone. 

“ Quick service,” he acknowledged. 
^^Very quick service, Shan Tung! But I 



248 THE RIVER’S END 

have my hand on something that is 
quicker! ” 

Suddenly Shan Tung leaned over the 
table. “John Keith, you are a fool if you 
came here with murder in your heart,” he 
said. “ Let us be friends. It is best. Let 
us be friends.” 


XXI 


I T was as if with a swiftness invisible to 
the eye a mask had dropped from Shan 
Tung’s face. Keith, preparing to fight, 
urging himself on to the step which he 
believed he must taK:e, was amazed. Shan 
Tung was earnest. There was more than 
earnestness in his eyes, an anxiety, a 
frankly revealed hope that Keith would 
meet him halfway. But he did not offer 
his hand again. He seemed to sense, in 
that instant, the vast gulf between yellow 
and white. He felt Keith’s contempt, the 
spurning contumely that was in the other’s 
mind. Under the pallid texture of his skin 
there began to burn a slow and growing 
flush. 

‘‘Wait!” he said softly. In his flowing 
gown he seemed to glide to a carven desk 
near at hand. He was back in a moment 
with a roll of parchment in his hand. He 
sat down again and met Keith’s eyes 

249 


THE RIVER’S END 


250 

squarely and in silence for a moment. 
“We are both men, John Keith.” His 
voice was soft and calm. His tapering 
fingers with their carefully manicured 
nails fondled the roll of parchment, and 
then unrolled it, and held it so the other 
could read. 

It was a university diploma. Keith 
stared. A strange name was scrolled upon 
it, Kao Lung, Prince of Shantung. His 
mind leaped to the truth. He looked at 
the other. 

The man he had known as Shan Tung 
met his eyes with a quiet, strange smile, a 
smile in which there was pride, a flash of 
sovereignty, of a thing greater than skins 
that were white. “ I am Prince Kao,” he 
said. “ That is my diploma. I am a 
graduate of Yale.” 

Keith’s effort to speak was merely a 
grunt. He could find no words. And 
Kao, rolling up the parchment and for¬ 
getting the urn of tea that was growing 
cold, leaned a little over the table again. 
And then it was, deep in his narrowed, 
smoldering eyes, that Keith saw a devil, 
a living, burning thing of passion, Kao’s 


THE RIVER’S END 251 

soul itself. And Kao’s voice was quiet, 
deadly. 

I recognized you in McDowell’s of¬ 
fice,” he said. ‘‘ I saw, first, that you were 
not Derwent Conniston. And then it was 
easy, so easy. Perhaps you killed Connis¬ 
ton. I am not asking, for I hated Con¬ 
niston. Some day I should have killed 
him, if he had come back. John Keith, 
from that first time we met, you were a 
dead man. Why didn’t I turn you over to 
the hangman? Why did I warn you in 
such a way that I knew you would come 
to see me? Why did I save your life 
which was in the hollow of my hand? 
Can you guess? ” 

“ Partly,” replied Keith. But go on. 
I am waiting.” Not for an instant did it 
enter his mind to deny that he was John 
Keith. Denial was folly, a waste of time, 
and just now he felt that nothing in the 
world was more precious to him than time. 

Kao’s quick mind, scheming and treach¬ 
erous though it was, caught his view-point, 
and he nodded appreciatively. Good, 
John Keith. It is easily guessed. Your 
life is mine. I can save it. I can destroy 


252 THE RIVER’S END 

it. And you, in turn, can be of service 
to me. You help me, and I save you. It 
is a profitable arrangement. And we both 
are happy, for you keep Derwent Connis- 
ton’s sister—and I—I get my golden¬ 
headed goddess, Miriam Kirkstone!” 

“ That much I have guessed,” said 
Keith. Go on!” For a moment Kao 
seemed to hesitate, to study the cold, gray 
passiveness of the other’s face. You 
love Derwent Conniston’s sister,” he con¬ 
tinued in a voice still lower and softer. 
‘‘And I—I love my golden-headed god¬ 
dess. See! Up there on the dais I have 
her picture and a tress of her golden hair, 
and I worship them.” 

Colder and grayer was Keith’s face as he 
saw the slumbering passion burn fiercer in 
Kao’s eyes. It turned him sick. It was 
a terrible thing which could not be called 
love. It was a madness. But Kao, the 
man himself, was not mad. He was a 
monster. And while the eyes burned like 
two devils, his voice was still soft and low. 

“I know what you are thinking; I see 
what you are seeing,” he said. “ You are 
thinking yellow, and you are seeing yellow. 


THE RIVER’S END 253 

My skin! My birthright! My-” He 

smiled, and his voice was almost caressing. 
“John Keith, in Pe-Chi-Li is the great 
city of Pekin, and Pe-Chi-Li is the greatest 
province in all China. And second only 
to that is the province of Shantung, which 
borders Pe-Chi-Li, the home of our Em¬ 
perors for more centuries than you have 
years. And for so many generations that 
we cannot remember my forefathers have 
been rulers of Shantung. My grandfather 
was a Mandarin with the insignia of the 
Eighth Order, and my father was Ninth 
and highest of all Orders, with his palace 
at Tsi-Nan, on the Yellow Sea. And I, 
Prince Kao, eldest of his sons, came to 
America to learn American law and Ameri¬ 
can ways. And I learned them, John Keith. 
I returned, and with my knowledge I 
undermined a government. For a time I 
was in power, and then this thing you call 
the god of luck turned against me, and I 
fled for my life. But the blood is still 
here—” he put his hand softly to his breast, 
“—the blood of a hundred generations of 
rulers. I tell you this because you dare 
not betray me, you dare not tell them who 



254 the RIVER’S END 

I am, though even that truth could aot 
harm me. I prefer to be known as Shan 
Tung. Only you—and Miriam Kirkstone 
—^have heard as much.” 

Keith’s blood was like fire, but his voice 
was cold as ice. Go on!'" 

This time there could be no mistake. 
That cold gray of his passionless face, the 
steely glitter in his eyes, were read cor¬ 
rectly by Kao. His eyes narrowed. For 
the first time a dull flame leaped into his 
colorless cheeks. 

“ Ah, I told you this because I thought 
we would work together, friends,” he 
cried. But it is not so. You, like my 
golden-headed goddess, hate me! You 
hate me because of my yellow skin. You 
say to yourself that I have a yellow heart. 
And she hates me, and she says that—^but 
she is mine, mine!” He sprang suddenly 
to his feet and swept about him with his 
flowing arms. “ See what I have prepared 
for her! It is here she will come, here 
she will live until I take her away. There, 
on that dais, she will give up her soul and 
her beautiful body to me—and you can¬ 
not help it, she cannot help it, all the 


THE RIVER’S END 255 

world cannot help it —and she is coming to 
me tonight! 

Tonight!'' gasped John Keith. 

He, too, leaped to his feet. His face was 
ghastly. And Kao, in his silken gown, was 
sweeping his arms about him. 

“ See! The candles are lighted for her. 
They are waiting. And tonight, when the 
town is asleep, she will come. And it is 
you who will make her come, John 
Keith!" 

Facing the devils in Kao’s eyes, within 
striking distance of a creature who was no 
longer a man but a monster, Keith mar¬ 
veled at the coolness that held him back. 

“ Yes, it is you who will at last give her 
soul and her beautiful body to me,” he 
repeated. “ Come. I will show you how 
—and why! ” 

He glided toward the dais. His hand 
touched a panel. It opened and in the 
opening he turned about and waited for 
Keith. 

“ Come! ” he said. 

Keith, drawing a deep breath, his soul 
ready for the shock, his body ready for 
action, followed him. 


XXII 


I NTO a narrow corridor, through a 
second door that seemed made of 
padded wool, and then into a dimly lighted 
room John Keith followed Kao, the China¬ 
man. Out of this room there was no other 
exit; it was almost square, its ceiling was 
low, its walls darkly somber, and that life 
was there Keith knew by the heaviness of 
cigarette smoke in the air. For a moment 
his eyes did not discern the physical evi¬ 
dence of that life. And then, staring at 
him out of the yellow glow, he saw a face. 
It was a haunting, terrible face, a face 
heavy and deeply lined by sagging flesh 
and with eyes sunken and staring. They 
were more than staring. They greeted 
Keith like living coals. Under the face 
was a human form, a big, fat, sagging form 
that leaned outward from its seat m a 
chair. 

Kao, bowing, sweeping his fiowiag 

256 


THE RIVER’S END 


257 

ment with his arms, said, ‘‘John Keith, 
allow me to introduce you to Peter Kirk- 
stone.” 

For the first time amazement, shock, 
came to Keith’s lips in an audible cry. He 
advanced a step. Yes, in that pitiable 
wreck of a man he recognized Peter Kirk- 
stone, the fat creature who had stood under 
the picture of the Madonna that fateful 
night, Miriam Kirkstone’s brother! 

And as he stood, speechless, Kao said: 
“ Peter Kirkstone, you know why I have 
brought this man to you tonight. You 
know that he is not Derwent Conniston. 
You know that he is John Keith, the 
murderer of your father. Is it not so? ” 

The thick lips moved. The voice was 
husky—“ Yes.” 

“ He does not believe. So I have 
brought him that he may listen to you. 
Peter Kirkstone, is it your desire that your 
sister, Miriam, give herself to me. Prince 
Kao, tonight? ” 

Again the thick lips moved. This time 
Keith saw the effort. He shuddered. He 
knew these questions and answers had been 
prepared. A doomed man was speaking. 


258 THE RIVER’S END 

And the voice came, choking, “ Yes.” 

Why?'^ 

The terrible face of Peter Kirkstone 
seemed to contort. He looked at Kao. 
And Kao’s eyes were shining in that dull 
room like the eyes of a snake. 

“ Because—it will save my life.” 

“ And why will it save your life? ” 

Again that pause, again the sickly, chok¬ 
ing effort. “ Because —I have killed a 
man!^ 

Bowing, smiling, rustling, Kao turned to 
the door. “ That is all, Peter Kirkstone. 
Good night. John Keith, will you follow 
me? ” 

Dumbly Keith followed through the 
dark corridor, into the big room mellow 
with candle-glow, back to the table with 
its mocking tea-urn and chinaware. He 
felt a thing like clammy sweat on his back. 
He sat down. And Kao sat opposite him 
again. 

‘‘That is the reason, John Keith. Peter 
Kirkstone, her brother, is a murderer, a 
cold-blooded murderer. And only Miriam 
Kirkstone and your humble servant. Prince 
Kao, know his secret. And to buy my; 


THE RIVER’S END 259 

secret, to save his life, the golden-headed 
goddess is almost ready to give herself to 
me— almost, John Keith. She will decide 
tonight, when you go to her. She will 
come. Yes, she will come tonight. I do 
not fear. I have prepared for her the 
candles, the bridal dais, the nuptial supper. 
Oh, she will come. For if she does not, if 
she fails, with tomorrow’s dawn Peter 
Kirkstone and John Keith both go to the 
hangman! ” 

Keith, in spite of the horror that had 
come over him, felt no excitement. The 
whole situation was clear to him now, and 
there was nothing to be gained by argu¬ 
ment, no possibility of evasion. Kao held 
the winning hand, the hand that put his 
back to the wall in the face of impossible 
alternatives. These alternatives flashed 
upon him swiftly. There were two and 
only two—flight, and alone, without Mary 
Josephine; and betrayal of Miriam Kirk¬ 
stone. Just how Kao schemed that he 
should accomplish that betrayal, he could 
not guess. 

His voice, like his face, was cold and 
strange when it answered the Chinaman; 


26 o the RIVER’S END 

it lacked passion; there was no emphasis, 
no inflection that gave to one word more 
than to another. And Keith, listening to 
his own voice, knew what it meant. He 
was cold inside, cold as ice, and his eyes 
were on the dais, the sacrificial altar that 
Kao had prepared, waiting in the candle- 
glow. On the floor of that dais was a great 
splash of dull-gold altar cloth, and it made 
him think of Miriam Kirkstone’s unbound 
and disheveled hair strewn in its outraged 
glory over the thing Kao had prepared for 
her. 

“ I see. It is a trade, Kao. You are 
offering me my life in return for Miriam 
Kirkstone.” 

More than that, John Keith. Mine is 
the small price. And yet it is great to me, 
for it gives me the golden goddess. But is 
she more to me than Derwent Conniston’s 
sister may be to you? Yes, I am giving 
you her, and I am giving you your life, 
and I am giving Peter Kirkstone his life 
—all for onef^ 

“ For one,” repeated Keith. 

“ Yes, for one.” 

And I, John Keith, in some mysterious 


THE RIVER’S END 261 

way unknown to me at present, am to de¬ 
liver Miriam Kirkstone to you?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And yet, if I should kill you, now— 
where you sit-” 

Kao shrugged his slim shoulders, and 
Keith heard that soft, gurgling laugh that 
McDowell had said was like the splutter of 
oil. 

“ I have arranged. It is all in writing. 
If anything should happen to me, there are 
messengers who would carry it swiftly. 
To harm me would be to seal your own 
doom. Besides, you would not leave here 
alive. I am not afraid.” 

How am I to deliver Miriam Kirk¬ 
stone to you? ” 

Kao leaned forward, his fingers interlac¬ 
ing eagerly. Ah, now you have asked the 
question, John Keith! And we shall be 
friends, great friends, for you see with the 
eyes of wisdom. It will be easy, so easy 
that you will wonder at the cheapness of 
the task. Ten days ago Miriam Kirkstone 
was about to pay my price. And then you 
came. From that moment she saw you in 
McDowell’s office, there was a sudden 


262 


THE RIVER’S END 


change. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps 
because of that thing you call intuition but 
to which we give a greater name. Perhaps 
only because you were the man who had 
run down her father’s murderer. I saw 
her that afternoon, before you went up at 
night. Ah, yes, I could see, I could under¬ 
stand the spark that had begun to grow 
in her, hope, a wild, impossible hope, and 
I prepared for it by leaving you my mes¬ 
sage. I went away. I knew that in a few 
days all that hope would be centered in 
you, that it would live and die in you, 
that in the end it would be your word 
that would bring her to me. And that 
word you must speak tonight. You must 
go to her, hope-broken. You must tell her 
that no power on earth can save her, and 
that Kao waits to make her a princess, that 
tom.orrow will be too late, that tonight 
must the bargain be closed. She will 
come. She will save her brother from the 
hangman, and you, in bringing her, will 
save John Keith and keep Derwent Con- 
niston’s sister. Is it not a great reward 
for the little I am asking? ” 

It was Keith who now smiled into the 


THE RIVER’S END 263 

eyes of the Chinaman, but it was a smile 
that did not soften that gray and rock-like 
hardness that had settled in his face. 

Kao, you are a devil. I suppose that is a 
compliment to your dirty ears. You’re 
rotten to the core of the thing that beats in 
you like a heart; you’re a yellow snake 
from the skin in. I came to see you be¬ 
cause I thought there might be a way out 
of this mess. I had almost made up my 
mind to kill you. But I won’t do that. 
There’s a better way. In half an hour I’ll 
be with McDowell, and I’ll beat you out 
by telling him that I’m John Keith. And 
I’ll tell him this story of Miriam Kirk- 
stone from begining to end. I’ll tell him 
of that dais you’ve built for her—your 
sacrificial altar!—and tomorrow Prince 
Albert will rise to a man to drag you out 
of this hole and kill you as they would 
kill a rat. That is my answer, you slit¬ 
eyed, Yale-veneered yellow devil! I may 
die, and Peter Kirkstone may die, but 
you’ll not get Miriam Kirkstone!” 

He was on his feet when he finished, 
amazed at the calmness of his own voice, 
amazed that his hands were steady and his 


264 THE RIVER’S END 

brain was cool in this hour of his sacrifice. 
And Kao was stunned. Before his eyes he 
saw a white man throwing away his life. 
Here, in the final play, was a master-stroke 
he had not foreseen. A moment before the 
victor, he was now the vanquished. About 
him he saw his world falling, his power 
gone, his own life suddenly hanging by a 
thread. In Keith’s face he read the truth. 
This white man was not bluffing. He 
would go to McDowell. He would tell 
the truth. This man who had ventured so 
much for his own life and freedom would 
now sacrifice that life to save a girl, one 
girl! He could not understand, and yet he 
believed. For it was there before his eyes 
in that gray, passionless face that was as 
inexorable as the face of one of his own 
stone gods. 

As he uttered the words that smashed all 
that Kao had planned for, Keith sensed 
rather than saw the swift change of emo¬ 
tion sweeping through the yellow-visaged 
Moloch staring up at him. For a space the 
oriental’s evil eyes had widened, exposing 
wider rims of saffron white, betraying his 
amazement, the shock of Keith’s unex- 


THE RIVER’S END 265 

pected revolt, and then the lids closed 
slowly, until only dark and menacing 
gleams of fire shot between them, and 
Keith thought of the eyes of a snake. 
Swift as the strike of a rattler Kao was on 
his feet, his gown thrown back, one claw¬ 
ing hand jerking a derringer from his 
silken belt. In the same breath he raised 
his voice in a sharp call. 

Keith sprang back. The snake-like 
threat in the Chinaman’s eyes had pre¬ 
pared him, and his Service automatic 
leaped from its holster with lightning 
swiftness. Yet that movement was no 
swifter than the response to Kao’s cry. 
The panel shot open, the screens moved, 
tapestries billowed suddenly as if moved 
by the wind, and Kao’s servants sprang 
forth and were at him like a pack of dogs. 
Keith had no time to judge their number, 
for his brain was centered in the race with 
Kao’s derringer. He saw its silver mount¬ 
ings flash in the candle-glow, saw its spurt 
of smoke and fire. But its report was 
drowned in the roar of his automatic as 
it replied with a stream of lead and flame. 
He saw the derringer fall and Kao 


s66 


THE RIVER’S END 


crumple up like a jackknife. His brain 
turned red as he swung his weapon on the 
others, and as he fired, he backed toward 
the door. Then something caught him 
from behind, twisting his head almost 
from his shoulders, and he went down. 

He lost his automatic. Weight of bodies 
was upon him; yellow hands clutched for 
his throat; he felt hot breaths and heard 
throaty cries. A madness of horror pos¬ 
sessed him, a horror that was like the blind 
madness of Laocoon struggling with his 
sons in the coils of the giant serpent. In 
these moments he was not fighting men. 
They w^ere monsters, yellow, foul-smeiling, 
unhuman, and he fought as Laocoon 
fought. As if it had been a cane, he 
snapped the bone of an arm whose hand 
was throttling him; he twisted back a head 
until it snapped between its shoulders; he 
struck and broke with a blind fury and a 
giant strength, until at last, torn and cov¬ 
ered with blood, he leaped free and 
reached the door. As he opened it and 
sprang through, he had the visual im¬ 
pression that only two of his assailants were 
rising from the floor. 


THt RIVER’S END 267 

For the space of a second he hesitated 
in the little hallway. Down the stairs was 
light—and people. He knew that he was 
bleeding and his clothes were torn, and 
that flight in that direction was impossible. 
At the opposite end of the hall was a cur¬ 
tain which he judged must cover a window. 
With a swift movement he tore down this 
curtain and found that he was right. In 
another second he had crashed the window 
outw^ard with his shoulder, and felt the 
cool air of the night in his face. The door 
behind him was still closed when he 
crawled out upon a narrow landing at the 
top of a flight of steps leading down into 
the alley. He paused long enough to con¬ 
vince himself that his enemies were mak¬ 
ing no effort to follow him, and as he went 
down the steps, he caught himself grimly 
chuckling. He had given them enough. 

In the darkness of the alley he paused 
again. A cool breeze fanned his cheeks, 
and the effect of it was to free jiim of the 
horror that had gripped him in his fight 
with the yellow men. Again the calmness 
with which he had faced Kao possessed 
him. The Chinaman was dead. He was 


THE RIVER’S END 


268 

sure of that. And for him there was not 
a minute to lose. 

After all, it was his fate. The game had 
been played, and he had lost. There was 
one thing left undone, one play Conniston 
would still make, if he were there. And 
he, too, would make it. It was no longer 
necessary for him to give himself up to 
McDowell, for Kao was dead, and Miriam 
Kirkstone was saved. It was still right and 
just for him to fight for his life. But 
Mary Josephine must know from him. It 
was the last square play he could make. 

No one saw him as he made his way 
through alleys to the outskirts of the town. 
A quarter of an hour later he came up the 
slope to the Shack. It was lighted, and 
the curtains were raised to brighten his 
way up the hill. Mary Josephine was 
waiting for him. 

Again there came over him the strange 
and deadly calmness with which he had 
met the tragedy of that night. He had 
tried to wipe the blood from his face, but 
it was still there when he entered and 
faced Mary Josephine. The wounds made 
by the razor-like nails of his assailants 


THE RIVER’S END 269 

were bleeding; he was hatless, his hair was 
disheveled, and his throat and a part of 
his chest were bare where his clothes had 
been torn away. As Mary Josephine came 
toward him, her arms reaching out to him, 
her face dead white, he stretched out a 
restraining hand, and said, 

“ Please wait, Mary Josephine! ” 
Something stopped her—the strangeness 
of his voice, the terrible hardness of his 
face, gray and blood-stained, the something 
appalling and commanding in the way he 
had spoken. He passed her quickly on his 
way to the telephone. Her lips moved; 
she tried to speak; one of her hands went 
to her throat. He was calling Miriam 
Kirkstone’s number! And now she saw 
that his hands, too, were bleeding. There 
came the murmur of a voice in the tele¬ 
phone. Someone answered. And then she 
heard him say, 

Shan Tung is dead!*^ 

That was all. He hung up the receiver 
and turned toward her. With a little cry 
she moved toward him. 

Derry—Derry - 

He evaded her and pointed to the big 


270 THE RIVER’S END 

chair in front of the fireplace. “ Sit down, 
Mary Josephine.” 

She obeyed him. Her face was whiter 
than he had thought a living face could be. 
And then, from the beginning to the end, 
he told her everything. Mary Josephine 
made no sound, and in the big chair she 
seemed to crumple smaller and smaller as 
he confessed the great lie to her, from the 
hour Conniston and he had traded identi¬ 
ties in the little cabin on the Barren. Until 
he died he knew she would haunt him as 
he saw her there for the last time—her 
dead-white face, her great eyes, her voice¬ 
less lips, her two little hands clutched at 
her breast as she listened to the story of the 
great lie and his love for hen 

Even when he had done, she did not 
move or speak. He went into his room, 
closed the door, and turned on the lights. 
Quickly he put into his pack what he 
needed. And when he was ready, he wrote 
on a piece of paper: 

A thousand times I repeat, ^ I love 
you.’ Forgive me if you can. If you can¬ 
not forgive, you may tell McDowell, and 


THE RIVER’S END 


271 

the Law will find me up at the place of 
our dreams—the river’s end. 

John Keith.” 

This last message he left on the table for 
Mary Josephine. 

For a moment he listened at the door. 
Outside there was no movement, no sound. 
Quietly, then, he raised the window 
through which Kao had come into his 
room. 

A moment later he stood under the light 
of the brilliant stars. Faintly there came 
to him the sounds of the city, the sound of 
life, of gayety, of laughter and of happi¬ 
ness, rising to him now from out of the 
valley. 

He faced the north. Down the side of 
the hill and over the valley lay the forests. 
And through the starlight he strode back 
to them once more, back to their cloisters 
and their heritage, the heritage of the 
hunted and the outcast. 


XXIII 


"liL through the starlit hours of that 



JL 1 l night John Keith trudged steadily 
into the Northwest. For a long time his 
direction took him through slashings, sec¬ 
ond-growth timber, and cleared lands; he 
followed rough roads and worn trails and 
passed cabins that were dark and without 
life in the silence of midnight. Twice a 
dog caught the stranger scent in the air 
and howled; once he heard a man’s voice, 
far away, raised in a shout. Then the 
trails grew rougher. He came to a deep 
wide swamp. He remembered that swamp, 
and before he plunged into it, he struck a 
match to look at his compass and his watch. 
It took him two hours to make the other 
side. He was in the deep and uncut timber 
then, and a sense of relief swept over him. 
The forest was again his only friend. 

He did not rest. His brain and his body 
demanded the action of steady progress, 
though it was not through fear of what lay 


THE RIVER’S END 


273 

behind him. Fear had ceased to be a 
stimulating part of him; it was even dead 
within him. It was as if his energy was 
engaged in fighting for a principle, and the 
principle was his life; he was following a 
duty, and this duty impelled him to make 
his greatest effort. He saw clearly what 
he had done and what was ahead of him. 
He was twice a killer of men now, and 
each time the killing had rid the earth of a 
snake. This last time it had been an ex¬ 
ceedingly good job. Even McDowell 
would concede that, and Miriam Kirk- 
stone, on her knees, would thank God for 
what he had done. But Canadian law 
did not split hairs like its big neighbor on 
the south. It wanted him at least for 
Kirkstone’s killing if not for that of Kao, 
the Chinaman. No one, not even Mary 
Josephine, would ever fully realize what 
he had sacrificed for the daughter of the 
man who had ruined his father. For Mary 
Josephine would never understand how 
deeply he had loved her. 

It surprised him to find how naturally 
he fell back into his old habit of discuss¬ 
ing things with himself, and how com- 


THE RIVER’S END 


274 

pletely and calmly he accepted the fact 
that his home-coming had been but a brief 
and wonderful interlude to his fugitivism. 
He did not know it at first, but this calm¬ 
ness was the calmness of a despair more 
fatal than the menace of the hangman. 

“ They won’t catch me,” he encouraged 
himiself. And she won’t tell them where 
I’m going. No, she won’t do that” 

He found himself repeating that thought 
over and over again. Mary Josephine 
would not betray him. He repeated it, 
not as a conviction, but to fight back and 
hold down another thought that persisted 
in forcing itself upon him. And this thing, 
that at times was like a voice within him, 
cried out in its moments of life, She 
hates you—and she will tell where you are 
going! ” 

With each hour it was harder for him to 
keep that voice down; it persisted, it grew 
stronger; in its intervals of triumph it 
rose over and submerged all other thoughts 
in him. It was not his fear of her be¬ 
trayal that stabbed him; it was the under¬ 
lying motive of it, the hatred that would 
inspire it. He tried not to vision her a^ 


THE RIVER’S END 


275 

he had seen her last, in the big chair, 
crushed, shamed, outraged—seeing in him 
no longer the beloved brother, but an im¬ 
postor, a criminal, a man whom she might 
suspect of killing that brother for his name 
and his place in life. But the thing forced 
itself on him. It was reasonable, and it 
was justice. 

“ But she won’t do it,” he told himself. 
“ She won’t do it.” 

This was his fight, and its winning meant 
more to him than freedom. It was Mary 
Josephine who would live with him now, 
and not Conniston. It was her spirit that 
would abide with him, her voice he would 
hear in the whispers of the night, her face 
he would see in the glow of his lonely fires, 
and she must remain with him always as 
the Mary Josephine he had known. So he 
crushed back the whispering voice, beat 
it down with his hands clenched at his 
side, fought it through the hours of that 
night with the desperation of one who 
fights for a thing greater than life. 

Toward dawn the stars began to fade 
out of the sky. He had been tireless, and 
he was tireless now. He felt no exhaus- 


276 THE RIVER’S END 

tion. Through the gray gloom that came 
before day he went on, and the first glow 
of sun found him still traveling. Prince 
Albert and the Saskatchewan were thirty 
miles to the south and east of him. 

He stopped at last on the edge of a 
little lake and unburdened himself of his 
pack for the first time. Fie was glad that 
the premonition of just such a sudden 
flight as this had urged him to fill his 
emergency grub-sack yesterday morning. 

Won’t do any harm for us to be pre¬ 
pared,” he had laughed jokingly to Mary 
Josephine, and Mary Josephine herself had 
made him double the portion of bacon 
because she was fond of it. It was hard 
for him to slice that bacon without a lump 
rising in his throat. Pork and love! He 
wanted to laugh, and he wanted to cry, 
and between the two it was a queer, half- 
choked sound that came to his lips. He 
ate a good breakfast, rested for a couple of 
hours, and went on. At a more leisurely 
pace he traveled through most of the day, 
and at night he camped. 

In the ten days following his flight from: 
Prince Albert he kept utterly out of sight. 


THE RIVER’S END 


277 

He avoided trappers’ shacks and trails and 
occasional Indians. He rid himself of his 
beard and shaved himself every other day. 
Mary Josephine had never cared much for 
the beard. It prickled. She had wanted 
him smooth-faced, and now he was that. 
He looked better, too. But the most strik¬ 
ing resemblance to Derwent Conniston was 
gone. At the end of the ten days he was 
at Turtle Lake, fifty miles east of Fort 
Pitt. He believed that he could show him¬ 
self openly now, and on the tenth day 
bartered with some Indians for fresh sup¬ 
plies. Then he struck south of Fort Pitt, 
crossed the Saskatchewan, and hit between 
the Blackfoot Hills and the Vermillion 
River into the Buffalo Coulee country. In 
the open country he came upon occasional 
ranches, and at one of these he purchased a 
pack-horse. At Buffalo Lake he bought 
his supplies for the mountains, including 
fifty steel traps, crossed the upper branch 
of the Canadian Pacific at night, and the 
next day saw in the far distance the purple 
haze of the Rockies. 

It was six weeks after the night in Kao’s 
place that he struck the Saskatchewan 


278 THE RIVER’S END 

again above the Brazeau. He did not 
hurry now. Just ahead of him slumbered 
the mountains; very close was the place 
of his dreams. But he was no longer im¬ 
pelled by the mighty lure of the years that 
were gone. Day by day something had 
worn away that lure, as the ceaseless grind 
of water wears away rock, and for two 
weeks he wandered slowly and without 
purpose in the green valleys that lay under 
the snow-tipped peaks of the ranges. He 
was gripped in the agony of an unutter¬ 
able loneliness, which fell upon and 
scourged him like a disease. It was a 
deeper and more bitter thing than a 
yearning for companionship. He might 
have found that. ‘Twice he was near 
camps. Three times he saw outfits coming 
out, and purposely drew away from them. 
He had no desire to meet men, no desire to 
talk or to be troubled by talking. Day 
and night his body and his soul cried out 
for Mary Josephine, and in his despair 
he cursed those who had taken her away 
from him. It was a crisis which was 
bound to come, and in his aloneness he 
fought it out. Day after day he fought it, 


THE RIVER’S END 279 

until his face and his heart bore the scars 
of it. It was as if a being on whom he 
had set all his worship had died, only it 
was worse than death. Dead, Mary Jose¬ 
phine would still have been his inspira¬ 
tion ; in a way she would have belonged to 
him. But living, hating him as she must, 
his dreams of her were a sacrilege and his 
love for her like the cut of a sword. 

In the end he was like a man who had 
triumphed over a malady that would 
always leave its marks upon him. In the 
beginning of the third week he knew that 
he had conquered, just as he had tri¬ 
umphed in a similar way over death and 
despair in the north. He would go into 
the mountains, as he had planned. He 
would build his cabin. And if the Law 
came to get him, it was possible that again 
he would fight. 

On the second day of this third week 
he saw advancing toward him a solitary 
horseman. The stranger was possibly a 
mile away when he discovered him, and 
he was coming straight down the flat of 
the valley. That he was not accompanied 
hy a pack-horse surprised Keith, for he 


28 o 


THE RIVER’S END 


was bound out of the mountains and not 
in. Then it occurred to him that he might 
be a prospector whose supplies were ex¬ 
hausted, and that he was easing his jour¬ 
ney by using his pack as a mount. Who¬ 
ever and whatever he was, Keith was not 
in any humor to meet him, and without 
attempting to conceal himself he swung 
away from the river, as if to climb the 
slope of the mountain on his right. No 
sooner had he clearly signified the new 
direction he was taking, than the stranger 
deliberately altered his course in a way 
to cut him off. Keith was irritated. 
Climbing up a narrow terrace of shale, 
he headed straight up the slope, as if his 
intention were to reach the higher terraces 
of the mountain, and then he swung sud¬ 
denly down into a coulee, where he was 
out of sight. Here he waited for ten 
minutes, then struck deliberately and 
openly back into the valley. 

He chuckled when he saw how cleverly 
his ruse had worked. The stranger was 
a quarter of a mile up the mountain and 
still climbing. 

“Now what the devil is he taking 


THE RIVER’S END 281 

all that trouble for?” Keith asked him¬ 
self. 

An instant later the stranger saw him 
again. For perhaps a minute he halted, 
and in that minute Keith fancied he was 
getting a round cursing. Then the stran¬ 
ger headed for him, and this time there 
was no escape, for the moment he struck 
the shelving slope of the valley, he 
prodded his horse into a canter, swiftly 
diminishing the distance between them. 
Keith unbuttoned the flap of his pistol 
holster and maneuvered so that he would 
be partly concealed by his pack when the 
horseman rode up. The persistence of the 
stranger suggested to him that Mary Jose¬ 
phine had lost no time in telling Mc¬ 
Dowell where the law would be most 
likely to find him. 

Then he looked over the neck of his 
pack at the horseman, who was quite near, 
and was convinced that he was not an 
officer. He was still jogging at a canter 
and riding atrociously. One leg was flap¬ 
ping as if it had lost its stirrup-hold; the 
rider’s arms were pumping, and his hat 
was sailing behind at the end of a string. 


282 


THE RIVER’S END 


^^Whoa!” said Keith. 

His heart stopped its action. He was 
staring at a big red beard and a huge, 
shaggy head. The horseman reined in, 
floundered from his saddle, and swayed 
forward as if seasick. 

Well, I’ll be-” 

** Duggan! 

Johnny—Johnny Keith!/* 


XXIV 


F or a matter of ten seconds neither of 
the two men moved. Keith was 
stunned. Andy Duggan’s eyes w^ere fairly 
popping out from under his bushy brows. 
And then unmistakably Keith caught the 
scent of bacon in the air. 

Andy—^Andy Duggan,” he choked. 
‘‘You know me—you knov/ Johnny Keith 

—you know me—you-” 

Duggan answered with an inarticulate 
bellow and jumped at Keith as if to bear 
him to the ground. He hugged him, and 
Keith hugged, and then for a minute they 
stood pumping hands until their faces were 
red, and Duggan was growling over and 
over: 

“ An’ you passed me there at McCofRn’s 
Bend—an’ I didn’t know you, I didn’t 
know you, I didn’t know you! I thought 
you was that cussed Conniston! I did. 
I thought you was Conniston! ” He stood 
back at last. “ Johnny—Johnny Keith! ” 

283 



284 the RIVER’S END 

“ Andy, you blessed old devil! ” 

They pumped hands again, pounded 
shoulders until they were sore, and in 
Keith’s face blazed once more the love of 
life. 

Suddenly old Duggan grew rigid and 
sniffed the air. I smell bacon!” 

“ It’s in the pack, Andy. But for 
Heaven’s sake don’t notice the bacon until 
you explain how you happen to be 
here.” 

Been waitin’ for you,” replied Duggan 
in an affectionate growl. Knew you’d 
have to come down this valley to hit the 
Little Fork. Been waitin’ six weeks.” 

Keith dug his fingers into Duggan’s 
arm. 

“ How did you know I was coming 
here?'" he demanded. Who told you?” 

“All come out in the wash, Johnny. 
Pretty mess. Chinaman dead. Johnny 
Keith, alias Conniston, alive an’ living 
with Conniston’s pretty sister. Johnny gone 
—skipped. No one knew where. I made 
guesses. Knew the girl would know if 
anyone did. I went to her, told her how 
you’n me had been pals, an’ she give me 


THE RIVER’S END 285' 

the idee you was goin’ up to the river’s 
end. I resigned from the Betty M., that 
night. Told her, though, that she was a 
ninny if she thought you’d go up there. 
Made her believe the note was just a 
blind.” 

My God,” breathed Keith hopelessly, 
“ I meant it.” 

“ Sure you did, Johnny. I knew it. But 
I didn’t dare let her know it. If you could 
ha’ seen that pretty mouth o’ hern curlin’ 
up as if she’d liked to have bit open your 
throat, an’ her hands clenched, an’ that 
murder in her eyes—Man, I lied to her 
then! I told her I was after you, an’ that 
if she wouldn’t put the police on you, I’d 
bring back your head to her, as they used 
to do in the old times. An’ she bit. Yes, 
sir, she said to me, ^ If you’ll do that, I 
won’t say a word to the police! ’ An’ here 
I am, Johnny. An’ if I keep my word 
with that little tiger, I’ve got to shoot you 
right now. Haw! Haw! ” 

Keith had turned his face away. 

Duggan, pulling him about by the 
shoulders, opened his eyes wide in amaze¬ 
ment.—Johnny-” 


286 


THE RIVER’S END 


Maybe you don’t understand, Andy,” 
struggled Keith. I’m sorry—she feels— 
like that.” 

For a moment Duggan was silent. Then 
he exploded with a sudden curse. 

Sorry! What the devil you sorry for, 
Johnny? You treated her square, an’ you 
left her almost all of Conniston’s money. 
She ain’t no kick cornin’, and she ain’t no 
reason for feelin’ like she does. Let ’er go 
to the devil, I say. She’s pretty an’ sweet 
an’ all that—but when anybody wants to 
go clawin’ your heart out, don’t be fool 
enough to feel sorry about it. You lied to 
her, but what’s tliat? There’s bigger lies 
than yourn been told, Johnny, a whole 
sight bigger! Don’t you go worryin’. I’ve 
been here waitin’ six weeks, an’ I’ve done 
a lot of thinkin’, and all our plans are set 
an’ hatched. An’ I’ve got the nicest cabin 
all built and waitin’ for us up the Little 
Fork. Here we are. Let’s be joyful, 
son! ” He laughed into Keith’s tense, gray 
face. “Let’s be joyful!” 

Keith forced a grin. Duggan didn’t 
know. He hadn’t guessed what that “ little 
tiger who would have liked to have bit 


THE RIVER’S END 287 

open his throat ” had been to him. The 
thick-headed old hero, loyal to the bottom 
of his soul, hadn’t guessed. And it came 
to Keith then that he would never tell 
him. He would keep that secret. He 
would bury it in his burned-out soul, and 
he would be “ joyful ” if he could. Dug¬ 
gan’s blazing, happy face, half buried in 
its great beard, was like the inspiration 
and cheer of a sun rising on a dark world. 
He was not alone. Duggan, the old Dug¬ 
gan of years ago, the Duggan who had 
planned and dreamed with him, his best 
friend, was with him now, and the light 
came back into his face as he looked 
toward the mountains. Off there, only a 
few miles distant, was the Little Fork, 
winding into the heart of the Rockies, 
seeking out its hidden valleys, its trailless 
canons, its hidden mysteries. Life lay 
ahead of him, life with its thrill and ad¬ 
venture, and at his side was the friend of 
all friends to seek it with him. He thrust 
out his hands. 

“ God bless you, Andy,” he cried. 
‘‘ YouVe the gamest pal that ever 
lived! ” 


288 THE RIVER’S END 

A moment later Duggan pointed to a 
clump of timber half a mile ahead. “ It’s 
past dinner-time,” he said. “ There’s 
wood. If you’ve got any bacon aboard, I 
move we eat.” 

An hour later Andy was demonstrating 
that his appetite was as voracious as ever. 
Before describing more of his own activi¬ 
ties, he insisted that Keith recite his ad¬ 
ventures from the night he killed that old 
skunk, Kirkstone.” 

It was two o’clock when they resumed 
their journey. An hour later they struck 
th^Little Fork and until seven traveled up 
the stream. They were deep in the lap of 
the mountains when they camped for the 
night. After supper, smoking his pipe, 
Duggan stretched himself out comfortably 
with his back to a tree. 

“ Good thing you come along when you 
did, Johnny,” he said. ‘‘I been waitin’ 
in that valley ten days, an’ the eats was 
about gone when you hove in sight. Meant 
to hike back to the cabin for supplies to¬ 
morrow or next day. Gawd, ain’t this the 
life! An’ we’re goin’ to find gold, Johnny, 
we’re goin’ to find it!” 


THE RIVER’S END 289 

“We’ve got all our lives to—to find it 
in,” said Keith. 

Duggan puffed out a huge cloud of 
smoke and heaved a great sigh of pleas¬ 
ure. Then he grunted and chuckled. 
“ Lord, what a little firebrand that 
sister of Conniston’s is!” he exclaimed. 
“Johnny, I bet if you’d walk in on her 
now, she’d kill you with her own hands. 
Don’t see why she hates you so, just be¬ 
cause you tried to save your life. Of 
course you must ha’ lied like the devil. 
Couldn’t help it. But a lie ain’t nothin’. 
I’ve told some whoppers, an’ no one ain’t 
never wanted to kill me for it. I ain’t 
afraid of McDowell. Everyone said the 
Chink w^as a good riddance. It’s the girl. 
There won’t be a minute all her life she 
ain’t thinkin’ of you, an’ she won’t be 
satisfied until she’s got you. That is, she 
thinks she won’t. But we’ll fool the little 
devil, Johnny. We’ll keep our eyes open 
—an’ fool her! ’ 

“ Let’s talk of pleasanter things,” said 
Keith. “ I’ve got fifty traps in the pack, 
Andy. You remember how we used to 
plan on trapping during the winter and 


THE RIVER’S END 


290 

hunting for gold during the summer?” 

Duggan rubbed his hands until they 
made a rasping sound; he talked of lynx 
signs he had seen, and of marten and fox. 
He had panned colors ” at a dozen places 
along the Little Fork and was ready to 
make his affidavit that it was the same 
gold he had dredged at McCoffin’s Bend. 

“ If we don’t find it this fall, we’ll be 
sittin’ on the mother lode next summer,” 
he declared, and from then until it was 
time to turn in he talked of nothing but 
the yellow treasure it had been his life¬ 
long dream to find. At the last, when 
they had rolled in their blankets, he raised 
himself on his elbow for a moment and 
said to Keith: 

‘‘Johnny, don’t you worry about that 
Conniston girl. I forgot to tell you I’ve 
took time by the forelock. Two weeks 
ago I wrote an’ told her I’d learned you 
was hittin’ into the Great Slave country, 
an’ that I was about to hike after you. So 
go to sleep an’ don’t worry about that 
pesky little rattlesnake.” 

“ I’m not worrying,” said Keith. 

Fifteen minutes later he heard Duggan 


THE RIVER’S END 291 

snoring. Quietly he unwrapped his blan¬ 
ket and sat up. There were still burning 
embers in the fire, the night—like that first 
night of his flight—was a glory of stars, 
and the moon was rising. Their camp was 
in a small, meadowy pocket in the center 
of which was a shimmering little lake 
across which he could easily have thrown 
a stone. On the far side of this was the 
sheer wall of a mountain, and the top of 
this wall, thousands of feet up, caught the 
glow of the moon first. Without awaken¬ 
ing his comrade, Keith walked to the lake. 
He watched the golden illumination as it 
fell swiftly lower over the face of the 
mountain. He could see it move like a 
great flood. And then, suddenly, his 
shadow shot out ahead of him, and he 
turned to find the moon itself glowing like 
a monstrous ball between the low shoul¬ 
ders of a mountain to the east. The world 
about him became all at once vividly and 
wildly beautiful. It was as if a curtain 
had lifted so swiftly the eye could not 
follow it. Every tree and shrub and rock 
stood out in a mellow spotlight; the lake 
was transformed to a pool of molten 


THE RIVER’S END 


292 

silver, and as far as he could see, where 
shoulders and ridges did not cut him out, 
the moonlight was playing on the moun¬ 
tains. In the air was a soft droning like low 
music, and from a distant crag came the 
rattle of loosened rocks. He fancied, for 
a moment, that Mary Josephine was stand¬ 
ing at his side, and that together they were 
drinking in the wonder of this dream at 
last come true. Then a cry came to his 
lips, a broken, gasping man-cry which he 
could not keep back, and his heart was 
filled with anguish. 

With all its beauty, all its splendor of 
quiet and peace, the night was a bitter 
one for Keith, the bitterest of his life. He 
had not believed the worst of Mary Jose¬ 
phine. He knew he had lost her and that 
she might despise him, but that she would 
actually hate him with the desire for a 
personal vengeance he had not believed. 
Was Duggan right? Was Mary Josephine 
unfair? And should he in self-defense 
fight to poison his own thoughts against 
her? His face set hard, and a joyless laugh 
fell from his lips. He knew that he was 
facing the inevitable. No matter what 


THE RIVER’S END 293 

had happened, he must go on loving 
Mary Josephine. 

All through that night he was awake. 
Half a dozen times he went to his blanket, 
but it was impossible for him to sleep. At 
four o’clock he built up the fire and at 
five roused Duggan. The old river-man 
sprang up with the enthusiasm of a boy. 
He came back from the lake with his 
beard and head dripping and his face 
glowing. All the mountains held no 
cheerier comrade than Duggan. 

They were on the trail at six o’clock and 
hour after hour kept steadily up the Little 
Fork. The trail grew rougher, narrower, 
and more difficult to follow, and at in¬ 
tervals Duggan halted to make sure of 
the way. At one of these times he said 
to Keith: 

“ Las’ night proved there ain’t no danger 
from her, Johnny. I had a dream, an’ 
dreams goes by contraries an’ always have. 
What you dream never comes true. It’s 
always the opposite. An’ I dreamed that 
little she-devil come up on you when you 
was asleep, took a big bread-knife, an’ cut 
your head plumb off! Yessir, I could see 


THE RIVER’S END 


.294 

her holdin’ up that head o’ yourn, an’ 
the blood was drippin’, an’ she was 
a-laughin’-” 

Shut up!'' Keith fairly yelled the 
words. His eyes blazed. His face was 
dead white. 

With a shrug of his huge shoulders and 
a sullen grunt Duggan went on. 

An hour later the trail narrowed into a 
short canon, and this canon, to Keith’s sur¬ 
prise, opened suddenly into a beautiful 
valley, a narrow oasis of green hugged in 
between the two ranges. Scarcely had 
they entered it, when Duggan raised his 
voice in a series of wild yells and began 
firing his rifle into the air. 

Home-coming,” he explained to Keith, 
after he was done. Cabin’s just over 
that bulge. Be there in ten minutes.” 

In less than ten minutes Keith saw it, 
sheltered in the edge of a thick growth 
of cedar and spruce from which its 
timbers had been taken. It was a larger 
cabin than he had expected to see—twice, 
three times as large. 

“How did you do it alone!” he ex¬ 
claimed in admiration. “ It’s a wonder, 



THE RIVER’S END 295 

Andy. Big enough for—for a whole 
family! ” 

Half a dozen Indians happened along, 
an’ I hired ’em,” explained Duggan. 
‘‘Thought I might as well make it big 
enough, Johnny, seein’ I had plenty of 
help. Sometimes I snore pretty loud, 
an’-” 

“ There’s smoke coming out of it,” cried 
Keith. 

“ Kept one of the Indians,” chuckled 
Duggan. “ Fine cook, an’ a sassy-lookin’ 
little squaw she is, Johnny! Her husband 
died last winter, an’ she jumped at the 
chance to stay, for her board an’ five bucks 
a month. Flow’s your Uncle Andy for a 
schemer, eh, Johnny?” 

A dozen rods from the cabin was a 
creek. Duggan halted here to water his 
horse and nodded for Keith to go on. 

“Take a look, Johnny; go ahead an’ 
take a look! I’m sort of sot up over that 
cabin.” 

Keith handed his reins to Duggan and 
obeyed. The cabin door was open, and 
he entered. One look assured him that 
Duggan had good reason to be “ sot up.” 


296 THE RIVER’S END 

The first big room reminded him of the 
Shack. Beyond that was another room 
in which he heard someone moving and 
the crackle of a fire in a stove. Outside 
Duggan was whistling. He broke off 
whistling to sing, and as Keith listened to 
the river-man’s bellowing voice chanting 
the words of the song he had sung at Mc- 
CofBn’s Bend for tw^enty years, he grinned. 
And then he heard the humming of a voice 
in the kitchen. Even the squaw was 
happy. 

And then—and then— 

GREAT GOD IN HEAVEN-” 

In the doonvay she stood, her arms 
reaching out to him, love, glory, triumph 
in her face —Mary Josephine! 

He swayed; he groped out; something 
blinded him—tears—hot, blinding tears 
that choked him, that came with a sob in 
his throat. And then she was in his arms, 
and her arms were around him, and she 
was laughing and crying, and he heard her 
say: ‘‘Why—^w^hy didn’t you come back—■ 
to me—that night? Why—why did you—= 
go out—through the—window? I—I was 



THE RIVER’S END 


297 

waiting—and I—I’d have gone—with 
you-” 

From the door behind them came Dug¬ 
gan’s voice, chuckling, exultant, booming 
with triumph. ‘‘Johnny, didn’t I tell you 
there was lots bigger lies than yourn? 
Didn’t I?. Eh?’’ 


XXV 


I T was many minutes, after Keith’s arms 
had closed around Mary Josephine, be¬ 
fore he released her enough to hold her 
out and look at her. She was there, every 
bit of her, eyes glowing with a greater 
glory and her face wildly aflush with a 
thing that had never been there before; 
and suddenly, as he devoured her in that 
hungry look, she gave a little cry, and 
hugged herself to his breast, and hid her 
face there. 

And he was whispering again and again, 
as though he could find no other word, 

‘‘ Mary—^Mary—Mary-” 

Duggan drew away from the door. The 
two had paid no attention to his voice, and 
the old river-man was one continuous 
chuckle as he unpacked Keith’s horse and 
attended to his own, hobbling them both 
and tying cow-bells to them. It was half 
an hour before he ventured up out of the 
grove along the creek and approached 

298 



THE RIVER’S END 


299 

the cabin again. Even then he halted, 
fussing v^ith a piece of harness, until he 
saw Mary Josephine in the door. The sun 
was shining on her. Her glorious hair 
was down, and behind her was Keith, so 
close that his shoulders were covered with 
it. Like a bird Mary Josephine sped to 
Duggan. Great red beard and all she 
hugged him, and on the flaming red of his 
bare cheek-bone she kissed him. 

“ Gosh,” said Duggan, at a loss for some¬ 
thing better to say. Gosh-” 

Then Keith had him by the hand. 

Andy, you ripsnorting old liar, if you 
weren’t old enough to be my father, I’d 
whale the daylights out of you! ” he cried 
joyously. “ I would, just because I love 
you so! You’ve made this day the—the—> 
the-” 

—^The most memorable of my life,” 
helped Mary Josephine. Is that it— 
John?” 

Timidly, for the first time, her cheek 
against his shoulder, she spoke his name. 

And before Duggan’s eyes Keith kissed 
her. 

Hours later, in a world aglow with the 


^oo THE RIVER’S END 

light of stars and a radiant moon, Keith 
and Mary Josephine were alone out in the 
heart of their little valley. To Keith it 
was last night returned, only more won¬ 
derful. There was the same droning song 
in the still air, the low rippling of run¬ 
ning water, the mysterious whisperings 
of the mountains. All about them were 
the guardian peaks of the snow-capped 
ranges, and under their feet was the soft 
lush of grass and the sweet scent of 
flowers. Our valley of dreams,” Mary 
Josephine had named it, an infinite happi¬ 
ness trembling in her voice. “ Our beau-^ 
tiful valley of dreams—come true!” 

“ And you would have come with me—? 
that night? ” asked Keith wonderingly. 

That night—I ran away? ” 

“ Yes. I didn’t hear you go. And at 
last I went to your door and listened, and 
then I knocked, and after that I called to 
you, and when you didn’t answer, I entered 
your room.” 

“Dear heaven!” breathed Keith. 
“ After all that, you would have come 
away with me, covered with blood, a—-a 
murderer, they say—a hunted man-” 


THE RIVER’S END 


301 

“John, dear.” She took one of his 
hands in both her own and held it tight. 
“John, dear, I’ve got something to tell 
you.” 

He was silent. 

“ I made Duggan promise not to tell 
you I was here when he found you, and I 
made him promise something else—to keep 
a secret I wanted to tell you myself. It 
was wonderful of him. I don’t see how 
he did it.” 

She snuggled still closer to him, and 
held his hand a little tighter. “You see, 
John, there was a terrible time after you 
killed Shan Tung. Only a little while 
after you had gone, I saw the sky growing 
red. It was Shan Tung’s place—afire. I 
was terrified, and my heart was broken, 
and I didn’t move. I must have sat at the 
window a long time, when the door burst 
open suddenly and Miriam ran in, and 
behind her came McDowell. Oh, I never 
heard a man swear as McDowell swore 
when he found you had gone, and Miriam 
flung herself on the floor at my feet and 
buried her head in my lap. 

“ McDowell tramped up and down, and 


THE RIVER’S END 


302 

at last he turned to me as if he was going 
to eat me, and he fairly shouted, ‘ Do you 
know— that cursed fool didrdt kill Judge 
Kirkstone/'” 

There was a pause in which Keith’s 
brain reeled. And Mary Josephine went 
on, as quietly as though she were talking 
about that evening’s sunset: 

Of course, I knew all along, from what 
you had told me about John Keith, that he 
wasn’t what you would call a murderer. 
You see, John, I had learned to love John 
Keith. It was the other thing that horri¬ 
fied me! In the fight, that night. Judge 
Kirkstone wasn’t badly hurt, just stunned. 
Peter Kirkstone and his father were 
always quarreling. Peter wanted money, 
and his father wouldn’t give it to him. It 
seems impossible,—what happened then. 
But it’s true. After you were gone Peter 
Kirkstone killed his father that he might 
inherit the estate! And then he laid the 
crime on you! ” 

“ My God! ” breathed Keith. Mary— 

Mary Josephine—how do you know? ” 

Peter Kirkstone was terribly burned in 
the fire. He died that night, and before 


THE RIVER’S END 


303 

he died he confessed. That was the power 
Shan Tung held over Miriam. He knew. 
And Miriam was to pay the price that 
would save her brother from the hang¬ 
man.” 

‘‘ And that,” whispered Keith, as if to 
himself, “ was why she was so interested in 
John Keith.” 

He looked away into the shimmering 
distance of the night, and for a long time 
both were silent. A woman had found 
happiness. A man’s soul had come out of 
darkness into light. 
























JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD’S 

_STORIES OF ADVENTURE 


May ba had wharever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s l ist. 

THE RIVER’S END | ~ ' 

A story of the Royal Mounted Police. 

THE GOLDEN SNARE 

Thrilling adventures in the Far Northland. 

NOMADS OF THE NORTH 

The story of a bear-cub and a dog. 

KAZAN 

The tale of a “quarter-strain wolf and three-quarters husky” torn 
between the call of the human and his wild mate. 

BAREE, SON OF KAZAN 

The story of the son of the blind Grey Wolf and the gallant pan 
he played in the lives of a man and a woman. 

THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN PLUM i/' 

The story of the King of Beaver Island, a Mormon colony, and his 
battle with Captain Plum. 

THE DANGER TRAIL 

A tale of love, Indian vengeance, and a mystery of the North. 
THE HUNTED WOMAN l/” 

A tale of a great fight in the “ valley of gold” for a woman. 

THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH 

The story of Fort o’ God, where the wild flavor of the wildemes, - 
is blended with the courtly atmosphere of France. 

THE GRIZZLY KIN G 

The story of Thor, the big grizzly. 

ISOBEL 

A love story of the Far North. 

THE V 70 LF HUNTERS 

A thrilling tale of adventure in the Canadian wilderness, 

THE GOLD HUNTERS 
The story of adventure in the Hudson Bay wilds, - 
THE COURAGE OF MARGE O’DOONE V 
Filled with exciting incidents in the land of sti*oag men and women. 
BACK TO GOD’S COUNTRY 

A thrilling story of the Far North. The great Photoplay was made 
from this book. 

Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York 







































ZANE GREY’S NOVELS 

F^ay be had wherever boohs sra sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list. 

THE MAN OF THK FOREST 
THE DESERT OF WHEAT 
THE U. P, TRAIL 
WILDFIRE 

THE BORDER LEGION 
THE RAINBOW TRAIL 
THE HERITAGE OF THE DESERT 
RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE 
THE LIGHT OF WESTERN STARS 
THE LAST OF THE PLAINSMEN 
THE LONE STAR RANGER 
DESERT GOLD 
BETTY ZANE 

« « >i« « « • « 

LAST OF THE GREAT SCOUTS 

The life story of “Buffalo Bill” by his sister Helen Cody 
Wetmore, with Foreword and conclusion by Zane Grey. 

ZANE GREY’S BOOKS FOR BOYS 

KEN WARD IN THE JUNGLE 
THE YOUNG LION HUNTE R 
THE YOUNG FORESTER 
THE YOUNG PITCHER 
THE SHORT STOP 

THE RED-HEADED OUTFIELD AND OTHER 
BASEBALL STORIES 

Gkosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New Yore 








































EDGAR RICE BURROUGH’S 
__NOVELS 

_May tie had wheraver books are sold. Ask for Grcsset & OunSap's list. 

TARZAN THE UNTAMED 

Tells of Tarzan’s return to the life of the ape-man in 
his search for vengeance on those who took from him hia 
wife and home. 

JUNGLE TALES OF TARZAN 

Records the many wonderful exploits by which Tarzan 
proves his right to ape kingship. 

A PRINCESS OF MARS 

Forty-three million miles from the earth—a succession 
of the weirdest and most astounding adventures in fiction. 
John Carter, American, finds himself on the planet Mars, 
battling for a beautiful woman, with the Green Men ot 
Mars, terrible creatures fifteen feet high, mounted on 
horses like dragons. 

THE GODS OF MARS 

Continuing John Carter’s adventures on the Planet Mars, 
in which he does battle against the ferocious “plant men,^’ 
creatures whose mighty tails swished their victims to instant 
death, and defies IsSus, the terrible Goddess of Death, 
whom all Mars worships and reveres. 

THE WARLORD OF MARS 

Old acquaintances, made in the two other stories, reap¬ 
pear, Tars Tarkas, Tardos Mors and others. There is a 
happy ending to the story in the union of the Warlord, 
the title conferred upon John Carter, with Dejah Thoris. 

THUVIA, MAID OF MARS 
The fourth volume of the series. The story centers 
around the adventures of Carthoris, the son of John Car¬ 
ter and Thuvia, daughter of a Martian Emperor. 


GROSSET & DUNLAP, Publishers, NEW YORK 






















FLORENCE L. BARCLAY’S 
NOVELS 

May be had wheravar books ars sold. Ask for Gross<t & Dunlap’s list. 

THE WHITE LADIES OF WORCESTER 
A novel of the 12 th Century. The heroine, believing she 
had lost her lover, enters a convent. He returns, and in¬ 
teresting developments follow. 

THE UPAS TREE 

A love story of rare charm. It deals with a successful 
author and his wife. 

THROUGH THE POSTERN GATE 

The story of a seven, day courtship, in which the dis¬ 
crepancy in ages vanished into insignificance before the 
convincing demonstration of abiding love. 

T HE ROSARY 

The story of a young artist who is reputed to love beauty 
above all else in the world, but who, when blinded through 
an accident, gains life’s greatest happiness. A rare story 
of the great passion of two real people superbly capable of 
love, its sacrifices and its exceeding reward. 

THE MISTRESS OF SHENSTONE 

The lovely young Lady Ingleby, recently widowed by the 
death of a husband wLo never understood her, meets a fine, 
clean young chap who is ignorant of her title and they fall 
deeply in love with each other. When he learns her real 
identity a situation of singular power is developed. 

THE BROKEN HALO 

The story of a young man whose religious belief was 
shattered in childhood and restored to him by the little 
white lady, many years older than himself, to whom he is 
passionately devoted. 

THE FOLLOWING OF THE STAR 

The story of a young missionary, who, about to start for 
Africa, marries wealthy Diana Rivers, in order to help her 
fulfill the conditions of her uncle’s wull, and how they finally 
come to love each other and are reunited after experiences 
that soften and purify^^_ 

Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York 





















ETHEL M. DELL’S NOVELS 


KSa; bs had wheraver books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list. 

THE LAMP IN THE DESERT 

The scene of this splendid story is laid in India and 
tells of the lamp of love that continues to shine through 
all sorts of tribulations to final happiness. 

GREATHEART 

The story of a cripple whose deformed body conceals 
a noble soul. 

THE HUNDREDTH CHANCE 

A hero who worked to win even when there was only 
“ a hundredth chance.” 

THE SWINDLER 

The story of a “bad man’s” soul revealed by a 
woman’s faith. 

THE TIDAL WAVE 

Talcs of love and of women who learned to know the 
true from the false. 

THE SAFETY CURTAIN 

A very vivid love story of India. The volume also 
contains four other long stories of equal interest. 

Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York 




















NOVELS OF FRONTIER LIFE BY 


WILLIAM MacLeod RAINE 


May be had wherever books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap’s list. 


MAVERICKS 

A tale of the western frontier, where the “ rustler ” abounds. One of the sweetest 
Eove stories ever told. 

A TEXAS RANGER 

How a member of the border police saved the life of an innocent man, followed a 
lagdtive to Wyoming:, and then passed through deadly peril to ultimate happiness. 

WYOMING 

In this \’ivid story the author brings out the turbid life of the frontier with all it2 
engaging dash and vigor. 

RIDGWAY OF MONTANA 

The scene is laid in the mining centers of Montana, where politics and mining in* 
dustries are the religion of the cexintry. 

BUCKY O’CONNOR 

Every chapter teems with wholesome, stirring adventures, replete with the dashing 
spirit of the border. 

CROOKED TRAILS AND STRAIGHT 

A story of Arizona; of swift-riding men and daring outlaws; of a bitter feud be¬ 
tween cattle-men and sheep-herders. 

BRAND BLOTTERS 

A story of the turbid life of the frontier with a charming love interest running 
through its pages. 

STEVE YEAGER 

A story brimful of excitement, with enough gun-play and adventure to suit anyone. 

A DAUGHTER OF THE DONS 

A Western story of romance and adventure, comprising a vivacious and stirring 
tale. 

THE HIGHGRADER 

A breezy, pleasant and amusing love story of Western mining life. 

THE PIRATE OF PANAMA 

■ ■ ■ . . ■ iiw III I I 

A tale of old-time phrates and of modern love, hate and adventure. 

TPIE YUKON TRAIL 

A crisply entertaining love story in the land where might makes right. 

THE VISION SPLENDID 

in which two cousins are contestants for the same prizes; political honors and the 
Land of a girl. 

THE SHERIFF'S SON 

The hero finally conquers both himself and his enemies and wins the love of a 
wonderful girl. 


Grosset 5c Dunlap, 


Publishers, 



New York 































BOOTH TARKINGTON’S 
NOVELS 

&/!ay be had wherever books are so2d. Askjor Grossat & Dunlap’s list 


SEVENTEEN. Illustrated by Arthur William Brown. 

No one but the creator of Penrod could have portrayed 
the immortal young people of this story. Its humor is irre¬ 
sistible and reminiscent of the time when the reader was 
Seventeen. 

PENROD. Illustrated by Gordon Grant. 

This is a picture of a boy^s heart, full of the lovable, hu- * 
morous, tragic things which are locked secrets to most older 
folks. It is a finished, exquisite work. 

PENROD AND SAM. Illustrated by Worth Drehm. 

Like “ Penrod and “ Seventeen,” this book contains 
some remarkable phases of real boyhood and some of the best 
stories of juvenile prankishness that have ever been written, 

THE TURMOIL. Illustrated by C. E. Chambers. 

Bibbs Sheridan is a dreamy, imaginative youth, who re¬ 
volts against his father's plans for him to a servitor of 
big business. The love of a fine girl turns Bibb’s life from 
failure to success. 

THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA. Frontispiece. 

A story of love and politics,—more especially a picture of 
a country editor’s life in Indiana, but the charm of the book 
lies in the love interest. 

THE FLIRT. Illustrated by Clarence F. Underwood. 

The “ Flirt,” the younger of two sisters, breaks one girl’s 
engagement, drives one man to suipide, causes the murder 
of another, leads another to lose his fortune, and in the end 
marries a stupid and unpromising suitor, leaving the really 
worthy one to marry her sister. 


Ask for Compute free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fiction 

Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York 

i I ... —--- 
























KATHLEEN NORRIS^ STQRI^ 

ftlay be had wheravcr books are sold. Ask for Grosset & Dunlap*s list 

SISTERS. Frontispiece by Frank Street. 

The California Redwoods furnish the background for this 
beautiful story of sisterly devotion^nd sacrifice. 

POOR, DEAR, MARGARET KIRBY. 

Frontispiece by George Gibbs. 

A collection of delightful stories, including “ Bridging the 
Years’’ and “The Tide-Marsh.” This story is now shown in 
moving pictures. 

JOSSELYN’S WIFE. Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert. 

The story of a beautiful woman who fought a bitter fight for 
happiness and love. 

MARTIE, THE UNCONQUERED. 

Illustrated by Charles E. Chambers. 

The triumph of a dauntless spirit over adverse conditions. 

THE HEART OF RACHAEL. 

PTontispiece by Charles E. Chambers. 

An interesting story of divorce and the problems that come 
with a second marriage. 

THE STORY OF JULIA PAGE. 

Frontispiece by C. Allan Gilbert. 

A sympathetic portrayal of the quest of a normal girl, obscure 
and lonely, for the happiness of life. 

SATURDAY’S CHILD. Frontispiece by F. Graham Cootes. ' 

^ Can a girl, born in rather sordid conditions, lift herself through 
sheer determination to the better things for which her soul 
hungered ? 

MOT HER. ^ Illustrated by F. C. Yohn. 

f A story of the big mother heart that beats in the background 
of every girl’s life, and some dreams which came true. 


Ask Complete free list of G. & D. Popular Copyrighted Fictioh 

Grosset & Dunlap, Publishers, New York. 





























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